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LIFE AND LABORS 



OF 



179 

FRANCIS ASBURY, 



BISHOP OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
IN AMERICA. 




BY 



GEORGE G. SMITH, D.D., 
1 w 

Author of '■''Life and Letters oj James O. Andrew" "Life and Times of 
George F. Pierce** "History of Methodism in Georgia,'''' etc. 



X 



« 



Nashville, Tenn.: \VO\ 

Publishing House M. E. Church, South, 
Barbee & Smith, Agents, 
1896. 



!-*'» 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1896, 

By George G. Smith, ^^O^C/S^ ( I 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



/2-3? 




De&icatiom 

7Jo Jo/in Christian Jfeener, 'D.'D.j 

Sen for &/sAo/2 of ' tAe 27?e/Aod/st <Sp/sco/>a/ OAurcA, Sou/ A, 

Uhes £&oo/c Ss 'Dedicated : 

not on/y decause of /Ae A/yA res/>ec/ ^ Stave /or A/s office 

and my /ofty adm/rat/on for A/s men/a/ y/f/s 

ana* mora/ ejcce/Zences, 

6ut as a to/cen of/Ae tender /ove S fee/ for one tuAo for /ony 

years S Aave ca//ed my free net. 

George G. Smith. 

(iii) 



PREFACE. 

Soon after the death of Bishop Asbury measures were 
put on foot to have a full biography of him prepared. 
Dr. S. K. Jennings, at that time one of the most schol- 
arly men of the Church, was selected to do the work. 
After a considerable lapse of time, he returned the ma- 
terial placed in his hands and declined to go any farther. 
In the meantime the journals of Bishop Asbury were 
published ; and as they partly served the purpose of a 
memoir, none was prepared. Then the history of Dr. 
Bangs and the more extensive work of Dr. Abel Stevens 
gave a full account of his labors ; and over forty years 
ago the Eev. Dr. Strickland sent to press " The Pioneer 
Bishop," which was a biography of Bishop Asbury. The 
Eev. Dr. Janes made selections from his journals, and 
thus prepared also a memoir in Asbury's own words. 

It has seemed to me, however, that a new life was 
demanded, and I have w T ritten it. I have relied very 
largely on his journals, but have by no means confined 
myself to them. I have freely availed myself of the la- 
bors of those who have gone before me. I do not think 
I have allowed,any available source of information to be 
neglected. I do not think a biographer is an historian 
in a general sense, and think that, however one may be 
tempted to turn aside from the direct line his work 
marks out, he should resist the temptation, and so I 
have confined myself as strictly as I could to the part 
which Asbury himself acted in the history of the 
Church. Nor do I think a biographer is an advocate or 



vi Preface. 

an apologist. It is his business to tell what the subject 
of his writing was, and what he did, and leave others 
to form conclusions for themselves. There are always 
matters in which the biographer and the subject of his 
writing are not fully agreed, and things of whose non- 
existence he would have been glad; but above all else, 
he must be honest and conceal nothing. There are few 
things in Asbury's life which ask for defense, and none 
which ask for concealment. He was so closely con- 
nected with the beginnings of things in the Methodism 
in America that the story of his life is largely the story 
of early Methodism, and I have traced his journeys and 
given an account of his personal connection with men 
and places with a particularity which may sometimes 
seem monotonous. 

I do not think Asbury has had the place he is entitled 
to in the history of the nation or of the Church. To no 
one man was America more indebted than to him. 

I have not given my authority for statements in 
many cases. Those familiar with his journal will see 
how closely and how freely I have used it. I have 
studied, but I found it difficult, if not impossible, to 
point out the page on which the statement was found 
in many cases. Where I could give my author, I have 
done so. 

1 think this book is needed, and I hope it will do good. 

George G-. Smith. 
Macon (Vineville), Ga. % 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

1745-1771. Page 
Asbury's Birth— Family of Joseph Asbury— Childhood — 
Conversion — Apprenticeship — The Local Preacher — On a 
Circuit — The Missionary 1 

CHAPTER II. 

1771-1772. 

The Young Missionary — Passage from Bristol — Incidents 
of the Voyage — Arrives at Philadelphia — Goes to New 
York — View of New York in 1771 — Journey to Mary- 
land 6 

CHAPTER III. 
1772. 

Journey to Maryland — Bohemia Manor — Strawbridge — 
Frederick County — View of Maryland — Asbury's First 
Round — Goes to Baltimore — View of Baltimore — Into 
Kent County — Conflict with the Parson — Sickness 14 

CHAPTER IV. 
1773-1774. 
Asbury in Maryland Again — Goes to New York — To Phil- 
adelphia — Mr. Rankin's Arrival — The First General Con- 
ference — Maryland Once More 26 

CHAPTER V. 
1774. 
Mr. Asbury in New York and Baltimore — New York Again 
— Discouragements — Mr. Rankin and Mr. Asbury — Rich- 
ard Wright Goes Home — Asbury's Discipline — Religious 
Experience — Feebleness of Body — Goes Southward — 
Marvland Again 34 

. (vii) 



viii Contents. 

CHAPTER VI. 

1775. Page 
Asbury's First Work in Virginia — Norfolk — Portsmouth — 
Isaac Luke— County Work — Brunswick Circuit 42 

CHAPTER VII. 
1776. 
The War Time— Mr. Wesley's Mistake — Asbury's View — 
Asbury Sick — Berkley Bath — Preaching — Conference at 
Deer Creek — Discussion on the Sacraments — Trouble 
with Mr. Rankin — Asbury left Out of the Minutes — 
Goes to Annapolis — Test Oath — Retires into Delaware . . 47 

CHAPTER VIII. 

1778. 
Life in Delaware — Thomas White — Asbury 's Studies — 
Stormy Times — The Conference at Leesburg— Asbury's 
Called Conference — Troubles in the Conferences — As- 
bury 's Hard Condition — A Truce Made 53 

CHAPTER IX. 

1781-1788. 
General Assistant — Conference in Baltimore — Settlement 
of Troubles — Through the Valley of Virginia — Allusion 
to Strawbridge— Through Eastern Virginia — First Visit 
to North Carolina — His Friends Among the Episcopal 
Clergy — Visits New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey — 
Barratt's Chapel, 1784 — Letter from Asbury to Shad- 
ford ;......... 60 

CHAPTER X. 
1784. 
Dr. Coke— Mr. Wesley's Will— Mr. Asbury Refuses to be 
Ordained Till a Conference is Called — The Conference 
Meets— Mr. Asbury and Dr. Coke Elected Bishops and 
Called Superintendents 72 

CHAPTER XL 

1781 

Mr. Asbury's Views on Episcopacy ; 77 



Contents. ix 

CHAPTER XII. PAGE 

Thomas Coke — The Welsh Gentleman — In Oxford — 
Coke's Curacy— His Conversion — Mr. Wesley's Favor— 
His Labors — His Death 81 

CHAPTER XIII. 

1785. 
The New Bishop — Tour Southward — Henry Willis — Jesse 
Lee — Visits Charleston. S. C. — Edgar Wells— Journey 
Northward — Cokesbury College — Visit to Mount Vernon 
— Corner Stone of College Laid 89 

CHAPTER XIV. 

1786. 
Asbury's Second Episcopal Tour — Hanover, Virginia — 
North Carolina — Sinclair Capers — Charleston — Hope 
Hull — John Dickins and the Revised Discipline — Cen- 
tral North Carolina — The Baltimore Conference — The 
Valley of Virginia — Religious Experience at Bath — Re- 
turn Southward 96 

CHAPTER XV. 

1787. 
The Tour of the Two Bishops- -Dr. Coke Again— The Blue 
Meetinghouse in Charleston — Prosperity of the Work in 
South Carolina and Georgia — Central South Carolina — 
Journey Northward — Virginia Conference — Baltimore 
Conference — Dr. Coke in Trouble — The New Discipline 
— Mr. Wesley's Displeasure — Effort to Appoint a Bishop 
—Failure 101 

CHAPTER XVI. 

1788. 
Charleston Again — Riot — Georgia — Holston — Greenbrier — 
Conference at Uniontown, Pa. — College Troubles 107 

CHAPTER XVII. 

1789. 
Mr. Wesley's Famous Letter and the Council — Georgia — 
Daniel Grant — Wesley and Whitefield School — Mr. Wes- 
ley's Letter — North Carolina — The Council 116 



x Contents. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

1790. PAGE 
Over the Continent — North Carolina — Charleston — Geor- 
gia — Western North Carolina — Over the Mountains — 
General Russell's — Kentucky —Virginia —Pennsylvania 
Cokesbury 124 

CHAPTER XIX. 

1791. 

Arminian Magazine — Coke's Arrival in Charleston — Wil- 
liam Harnmett — Georgia Conference — Virginia — Wes- 
ley's Death— Coke's Return to England — Jesse Lee — 
New England — Asbury's Visit 128 

CHAPTER XX. 

1792. 

Returns Southward — Cokesbury Troubles — Virginia Confer* 
ence — North Carolina Conference — Troubles in Charles- 
ton — Georgia Conference — Beverly Allen's Expulsion 
— Tour to Kentucky — Northward Again 136 

CHAPTER XXI. 
1793-1794. 
Southern Tour — Great Exposure — William McKendree — 
Tour to the North — Southward Again — The College — 
R. R, Roberts 153 

CHAPTER XXII. 

1795. 

Episcopal Journeyings — Death of Judge White— The En- 
nalls Family — Governor Van Cortlandt — Return South. . 160 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
1796. 
South Carolina — Georgia — North Carolina — Tennessee — 
Virginia — Views on Education — Bridal Party in the 
Mountains — Methodism in Brooklyn— Southward Again 
— Francis Acuff 166 



Contents. xi 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Charleston — Sickness — Northward Journey — Breaks Down 
in Kentucky — Reaches Baltimore — Goes on His Tour 
Northward — Jesse Lee — Returns South — Gives Up at 
Brunswick, Virginia, and Retires for the Winter 170 

CHAPTER XXV. 

1798. 
Asbury Out of His Sick Room — Recovery — Views on Slav- 
ery — On Local Preachers — Some of His Mistakes — Vir- 
ginia Conference — 0' Kelly — Tour Northward— Death of 
Dickins . 177 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

1799. 
Asbury in the Last Year of the Century — Charleston — 
North Carolina —Advice of Physicians — Feebleness of 
Whatcoat — Jesse Lee and Benjamin Blanton — Henry 
Parks — Tait's, Pope's, and Grant's — Extensive Tour 
Through Georgia — Charleston Again 183 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

1800. 
Beginning of the New Century — Asbury Rests a Month — 
Washington's Death — Nicholas Snethen — General Con- 
ference — Great Revival — Whatcoat's Election as Bishop 
— Journey Northward 188 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
1801. 
Troubles About Slavery — Death of Jarratt — Northern Tour / 
— Revival Days— Southern Tour — Charleston Again,. . . , 198 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

1802. 
Northward Again — A View of the Virginia Conference — 
Baltimore— His Mother's Death— Meeting with O'Kelly 
— Over the Alleghanies — Exposure in Tennessee — Sick- 
ness — McKendree— Reaches Camden and Rembert's 205 



xii Contents. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

1803. Page 

The South Carolina Conference — Scotch in North Carolina 
— Mr. Meredith's Work in Wilmington — Cumberland 
Street Church in Norfolk — Northward Journey — Mer- 
chandise of Priests in Boston— Southward Again— Trip to 
Ohio— Kentucky — Dr. Hinde and His Blister — Journey 
to Charleston — Conference at Augusta 209 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

1804. 
Conference in Augusta — Reasons for Never Marrying — 
Journey Northward — General Conference — Slavery Ques- 
tion Again — Confined by Sickness — Letter to Hitt — Jour- 
ney to the West, and Thence to Charleston 218 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

1805. 
Journey Northward — Letter to Hitt — Conference in North 
Carolina— Episcopal Trials — Journey to the North — Jour- 
ney to the West and the South 225 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

1806. 
Asbury Alone — Coke Offers to Come to America— Offer 
Declined — Camp Meetings in the East — Whatcoat's 
Death— Western Tour— Southern Tour 233 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
1807. 
Asbury Alone — Journey Northward — Western New York 
— Visits Ohio, and Goes Through Kentucky to Georgia— 
Views on Education . . . . 240 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

1808. 
South Carolina Conference— George Dougherty— North- 
ward Journey Through New Virginia— Baltimore— Gen- 
eral Conference— Death of Harry Gough— Conference 
Legislation— Election of McKendree— Tour of the Bish- 
ops—Meets William Capers— Capers's Recollections 246 



Contents. xiii 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

1809. Page 
McKendree's New Departure — Northward Tour — Confer- 
ence at Harrisonburg — Journey to New England — West- 
ern New York — Western Conference in Cincinnati — 
Journey to Charleston , 257 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

1810. 
Asbury and McKendree on Their Second Tour — The Vir- 
ginia Conference — Mary Withey's Funeral — New York 
Conference — New England — Jesse Lee's History — Lee 
and Asbury — Genesee Conference — Western Conference 
—Senator Taylor 266 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

1811. 
Asbury in His Old Age — Sweetness of His Character — Crit- 
icism on Adam Clarke — Visits Canada —Returns to the 
States — Goes to Ohio and Southward to Georgia 271 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

1812. 
Near the Close — General Conference —Presiding Eldership 
—Benson's Life of Fletcher— Ohio— Nashville 277 

CHAPTER XL. 

1813. 

Asbury's Last Effective Year — Northward Again — White- 
head's Life of Wesley — Things in New England — West- 
ern Journal — Epistle to McKendree — Charleston Again. 282 

CHAPTER XLL 

1814-1815. 
The Sun Going Down — Goes Northward — Long Attack of 
Sickness in Pennsylvania— John Wesley Bond — Mc- 
Kendree Crippled — Reaches Nashville — Georgia for the 
Last Time — Goes Northward — The West Again — Surren- 
ders All Control to McKendree 288 



xiv Contents. 

CHAPTER XLIL 

1816. Page 

Asbury's Last Journey — The Sun Goes Down — Granby, 
South Carolina — Journey to Eichmond — Last Sermon — 
Reaches Mr. Arnold's — Death Scene 295 

CHAPTER XLIII. 
Asbury's Religious Experience 301 

CHAPTER XLIV. 
The Character of Francis Asbury 306 



LIFE AND LABORS OF FRANCIS ASBURY. 

(XV) 



FRANCIS ASBURY. 



CHAPTER I. 

1745-1771. 

Asbury's Birth — Family of Joseph Asbury — Childhood — Con- 
version — Apprenticeship — The Local Preacher — On a Cir- 
cuit — The Missionary. 

FRANCIS ASBURY was the son of Joseph As- 
bury and Elizabeth Rogers, his wife. He was 
born on the 20th or 21st day of August, 1745, about 
five miles from Birmingham, Staffordshire, England. 
His father w r as a sturdy yeoman, a gardener for the 
great folks, or perhaps a manager of the gentlemen's 
estates. He had a home of his own, was industri- 
ous, sober, thrifty, and might have been wealthy, 
Asbury said, if he had not been so liberal. 

The family w T hose name he bears, and from whom 
he probably sprang, were large landholders in Staf 
fordshire, and John Evans, the father of " George 
Eliot," was a tenant on their estate. If Joseph As- 
bury sprang from this stock, he was evidently one 
of its poorer members; but what he lacked in vested 
funds he made up in industry and capacity, and no 
lord in England was more independent than the 
good gardener of Staffordshire. 

There were but two children in the little family, 
one of whom, a girl, died in infancy. Joseph As- 
bury was able and willing to give his only son a 
good education, and sent him to school earlv, and 

(!) 



2 Francis Asbuby. 

he was able to read at between six and seven years 
of age. But the master of the school used to beat 
the sensitive boy so cruelly that his distaste for the 
school became fixed, and he was permitted to dis- 
continue attendance upon it before he was twelve 
years old. He was then employed as a servant in 
a wealthy and ungodly family; but when he was 
near fourteen years old, he chose the trade of a 
saddler, and was apprenticed to a kind master, with 
whom he remained until he was nearly of age. 

His parents were Church-of -England people of the 
best type, and he was carefully brought up. "He 
never/' he says, "dared an oath or hazarded a lie, 
and was always a prayerful, religious child, abhor- 
ring mischief and wickedness." His comrades called 
him parson; and when the brutal schoolmaster so 
cruelly flogged him, he found relief in prayer. The 
good mother, always hospitable, and especially so 
to preachers, invited a pious man — not a Methodist, 
however — to her home. The young son was awak- 
ened by hearing him talk, and began to be more care- 
ful in attention to his religious duties. The parish 
priest, at whose church the family worshiped, was 
not a converted man, and so the young inquirer went 
to another church, opened to Whitefield's preachers. 
Here he heard the leading evangelical preachers of 
that day, and into his hands came the sermons of 
Whitefield and Cennick, which he read with great 
interest. He became anxious to hear the Wesley- 
ans, and sought them out, and joined their society; 
and while praying with a young companion in his 
father's barn, he was consciously converted. He 
now began to go among the laborers and farmers, 



Francis As bury. 3 

and talk to them of religion, and at his father's 
house he frequently held meetings. He met a class 
regularly. He seems to have had no license to 
preach, but he was really a local preacher before he 
was seventeen. After some months, he exercised 
his gifts in the Methodist chapel, and became, while 
a saddler's apprentice, a regular local preacher. He 
was a cheerful and ready helper of the traveling 
preachers, and worked diligently in the shires about, 
preaching three, four, and even five times a week. 
After thus laboring for five years as a local preach- 
er, he entered the traveling connection. 

He says little of his work in England, and we do 
not know from him what were the circuits that he 
traveled; nor does he mention any interviews he had 
with Mr. Wesley, but he met him every year, doubt- 
less, and Mr. Wesley learned to value the honest, 
sturdy young man, so faithful to the work put into 
his hands. 

Mr. Wesley had heard the call for more laborers 
for America, and sent Boardman and Pilmoor; and 
now, in 1771, he needed others to help them. Young 
Asbury volunteered to go, and, with Richard Wright, 
he was chosen for the distant field. It was his in- 
tention to remain six years, and then return to En- 
gland, but he never went back. The ten years which 
had elapsed since he began his work as a preacher 
had not been idle ones. He had. studied hard, and 
improved greatly. It is evident that he had become 
a preacher of no mean parts and of no insignificant 
attainments before he began his work in the new 
world. It was a hard thing for him to leave the 
good parents who had done so much for him, and for 



4 Francis As bury. 

them to surrender their only child, but they cheer- 
fully gave him up, and he went to Bristol by Mr. 
Wesley's order to take his departure on his mis- 
sion work. 

Of Joseph Asbury the son says little more than 
has been written above. He lived to be quite an old 
man, passing beyond his fourscore years. He was 
evidently 'a good man of no remarkable parts. As- 
bury's mother was a woman of good mind, and good 
culture for those times; a woman of deep piety, and 
of great devotion to the Church. Asbury was an 
affectionate son, -and used a liberal part of his small 
income to add to the comfort of the good people in 
England as long as they lived. 

His early life was spent in close contact with the 
best English people, and in his boyhood he was an 
inmate of a gentleman's family, and was thus trained 
in the best school of manners, and acquired the most 
refined tastes. His access to and welcome into the 
best families of America after he became an Ameri- 
can itinerant were perhaps due in no small degree 
to his early training. 

While his early education was not advanced, it 
was correct as far as it went, and very great dili- 
gence in after time made him a scholar of no mean 
kind. When he began the study of the languages 
he does not say, but not in all probability till after 
he came to America; but before he took his depart- 
ure from England he had secured a very respectable 
acquaintance with the best religious literature, and 
especially with that excellent selection of books 
from the old Puritans which Mr. Wesley had re- 
published. 



Fraxcis Asbuhy. 5 

With this equipment he presented himself as a 
candidate for what was really a foreign mission, and 
with little idea of the great work he was to do, 
bade England a long and, as it proved, a last fare- 
well. He says but little of the circumstances at- 
tending his appointment, and no one perhaps of all 
Mr. Wesley's preachers expected less what was to 
be his future than he did. Xo man ever went to 
a work with purer intent than this young circuit 
preacher. He came, with a spirit of perfect conse- 
cration, to Bristol, which was the seaport from 
which the American ships generally sailed to the 
western shores, and, in company with Richard 
Wright, took shipping in the fall of 1771 to come to 
America and assist Boardman and Pilmoor. 



CHAPTER II. 

1771-1772. 

The Young Missionary — Passage from Bristol — Incidents of the 
Voyage — Arrives at Philadelphia — Goes to New York — View 
of New York in 1771 — Journey to Maryland. 

THE missionary to Japan or China in 1896 makes 
an easier and a quicker passage than the two 
young Englishmen made from Bristol to Philadel- 
phia in 1771. 

Richard Wright, the companion of Asbury, seems 
to have been unsuited to the work for which he vol- 
unteered, and his career in America was not cred- 
itable. 

Asbury w 7 as now in his twenty-sixth year, and 
had been a preacher for ten years. Pie was intense- 
ly in earnest, and no man ever went on a mission 
with greater purity of intention. His father and 
mother were poor, and it was evident that he had 
made little by his preaching or his saddle-making, 
for when he reached Bristol, from which port he was 
to take shipping to Philadelphia, he had not a shil- 
ling in his pocket. 

The Bristol Methodists were, next to those of Lon- 
don, the wealthiest Methodists in England, and they 
raised a purse of ten pounds to supply the needs of 
the missionaries. They forgot, however, that the 
voyagers would need beds to sleep on, and when the 
ship was under way the young preachers found that 
(6) 



Francis Asbury. 7 

they must be content with two blankets as a couch 
across the seas. 

The voyage was more than eight weeks long, and 
they had preaching every Sunday. Sometimes the 
winds were fresh, but the young preacher stood 
propped by the mizzenmast and preached to the 
somewhat insensible sailors, and in the w eary week- 
days gave himself to the reading of good books. 
He does not seem to have had many. He read the 
a Pilgrim's Progress;" Edwards's account of the 
great revival in New England which took place 
thirty-five years before, and of which the good man 
found but few traces when, a score of years after 
this, he entered New England himself: and the life 
of M. de Benty, the Catholic ascetic, who had no 
little to do with the austerities to which the early 
preachers unwisely subjected themselves. These 
books, with the Bible, gave him employment during 
the weary days of a tedious voyage. At last, after 
having been nearly two months on the way, Phila- 
delphia was reached. There was a society here and 
a hundred members, and a meetinghouse; and Mr. 
Francis Harris met the long-looked-for reinforce- 
ments, and took them to his home. There was a 
meeting that night, and Mr. Asbury and Mr. Wright 
went to it- and were introduced to the American 
Methodists. Mr. Pilmoor w r as here as pastor and 
Mr. Boardman was in New York, and after a few 
days' stay, during which Mr. Asbury preached, he 
then began his journey through the Jerseys to York, 
as he called New York. The societies in those days 
furnished a horse to the helpers and on horseback 
the journey was made. 



8 Francis As bury. 

Some years before this an English captain who 
had lost one eye at Louisburg was in Bath, England, 
and heard Mr. Wesley preach. He was converted 
and began to work as a lay preacher, and when he 
was made barrack master in Albany, in America, an 
office which seems to have demanded little atten- 
tion, he began to work as a lay preacher in New- 
York, and went thence into the Jerseys and to Phil- 
adelphia. He became a leading spirit among the 
Methodists in both cities, and marked out a circuit 
for himself between them. 

Asbury met in Philadelphia a Mr. Van Pelt, a 
farmer from Staten Island, who had heard him 
preach, and consented, at his instance, to visit the 
island on his way to New York. There w 7 ere a few 
small societies in New Jersey which had been organ- 
ized by Captain Webb, but there seems to have been 
none in Staten Island. Mr. Van Pelt and Justice 
Wright, however, gave him their houses as preach- 
ing places, and before he reached New York City 
he preached in the island. 

About five years before Asbury came, in the house 
of Philip Embury, an Irish carpenter, the first Meth- 
odist sermon in New York had been preached by 
Embury himself, and he had meetings there. Captain 
Webb came to his help, and when the house proved 
to be too small they went to a rigging loft, and then 
a stone church was projected and built, and in it the 
little society was now worshiping. When Asbury 
came to the city he found the society already organ- 
ized and in working order. Captain Webb, Robert 
Williams, and Mr. Eoardman had all worked here. 
New York was now quite a growing town, almost 



F RAX CIS Asbur1\ 9 

as large as Philadelphia. There were in it seven- 
teen churches. Of these the Episcopalians had 
three; the High Dutch, or Reformed German, one; 
the Low Dutch, or Dutch Reformed, two; the Lu- 
therans, two; the French Protestants, one; the Pres- 
byterians, two; the Seceders, one; the Baptists, one; 
and the Methodists, one. The Methodists had gath- 
ered a small society, and some of its members were 
men of substance. Among these was William Lup- 
ton, who had married a rich widow and was a well- 
to-do merchant. The clergymen of the Church of 
England in the city were evidently friendly to the 
new society, and each of them made a generous 
contribution when the new church was built. Near 
by the stone church a little parsonage had been 
erected, and a colored woman w T as secured as house- 
keeper and maid of all work. Such supplies as the 
preachers needed were furnished by Mr. Newton, 
the steward. The barber was employed to shave 
them, the physician to attend them, and the charge 
for castor oil indicates a proper, if not pleasant, pro- 
vision for the cure of their ailments. Mr. Pilmoor, 
Mr. Williams, and now Mr. Boardman, had pre- 
ceded Mr. Astrory. Mr. Williams and Mr. Pilmoor 
had each been furnished by liberal stewards with a 
beaver hat which cost £2 5s. apiece.* 

When the young Englishman, full of missionary 
ardor, came into the city he found Captain Webb 
and Mr. Boardman both there. He began to feel 
restless in a little while, pnd he expressed his dis- 
satisfaction to himself in his journal. The preachers, 
he thought, ought to circulate; they we^e too fond 

* Wakeley. 



10 Fbancis Asbury. 

of the city. And so, after a little while, he struck 
out for himself to form his circuit in the country 
around. He went to Staten Island, Long Island, 
East Chester, and West Farms. He preached every 
day in the week in the country, and then returned 
to the city for his Sunday work. 

If Mr. Asbury had been a vigorous man in En- 
gland, his health failed soon after he came to Amer- 
ica. It was a rare thing for him to be perfectly 
well after that, if we may judge from his journal; 
and, indeed, living as he did, he could scarcely have 
hoped for health. He rose at four in the morning, 
or soon after, preached when he could at five, trav- 
eled fifteen or twenty miles a day over wretched 
roads, faced all kinds of severe weather, and ob- 
served an entire fast one day in the week and a par- 
tial fast on another. He did not find things to suit 
him in New York. He was not well, and perhaps 
he was a little exacting. Methodism was new in 
America, and Mr. Newton and Mr. Lupton and the 
other trustees had heads of their own, and did not 
see things as he did ; but as he was only to stay a little 
while now, and as Mr. Boardman was in charge, he 
said nothing about it save in his journal. After a 
few months around New York -and in it, he turned his 
face toward Philadelphia, preaching in the villages 
in Jersey along the way. New Jersey w r as thickly 
peopled in that day, but it was not fruitful ground 
for the Methodists. The Presbyterians had a strong 
hold in the colony, and during the days of the Ten- 
nents and Mr. Whitefield there had been a great re- 
vival among them, and twenty years before this the 
college at Princeton had been established. The 



Francis As bury. 11 

Quakers were numerous, but the Church people 
among whom the early Methodists found their first 
adherents were not many, yet in the towns Captain 
Webb had founded a few societies. 

Asbury now came to Philadelphia, where he took 
charge. Philadelphia was at that time the most 
important city in America. It had been settled now 
a hundred years; all around it was a fertile land, 
and it was the market and trading center of the new- 
ly-settled valleys of Maryland and Virginia, as well 
as of Pennsylvania. The Quakers had now become 
wealthy, respectable, and worldly. They had the 
garb of George Fox, but the utilitarian spirit of 
their townsman, the enterprising printer, Benjamin 
Franklin, was more common than the heavenly 
mind of the earnest reformer. There were fervent 
souls among them, but the mass was absorbed in the 
one idea of making gain. There was a very friendly 
feeling toward the society on the part of the Church 
people, and Captain Webb had organized a society 
of a hundred souls, and they had bought an old 
church and had services regularly. There were a 
number of country appointments attached to the 
city charge, and Mr. Asbury preached somewhere 
every day. He was a born disciplinarian. He de- 
manded strict obedience to orders. He gave it him- 
self, and he expected it from everyone else. In his 
endeavor to carry out these measures in Philadel- 
phia he met very stern opposition, but while he felt 
it keenly, it did not cause him to swerve. He re- 
mained his three months in Philadelphia, and then 
he went to New York again and relieved Mr. Wright. 
This young man, he said, had nearly ruined every- 



12 Francis As bur r. 

thing by having a general love feast. It was ev- 
ident to him that Mr. Wright had been spoiled, and 
he determined to be on his guard. He watched all 
men closely, and (Mr. Rankin thought) somewhat 
suspiciously; but he watched no one as he watched 
him self , and demanded from no one what he did not 
ask from himself. He was naturally genial and 
cheerful, and could have been a bright companion, 
but he thought it was wrong to be so, and reproached 
himself for being too light. He was troubled on his 
first visit to New York by certain things which need- 
ed to be mended, and now when he was in charge he 
found himself where it was his duty to mend them. 
His journal gives us an insight into the usages of 
the strongest society in America. There was pub- 
lic preaching on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday 
nights. On Sunday there were two sermons, evi- 
dently out of Episcopal Church hours. The society 
was to have a private meeting on Sunday night. 
The preacher was to meet the children and the stew- 
ards once a week. 

There was evidently a good understanding be- 
tween the society and the Church, and the rector 
of one of the churches seems to have had a sacra- 
mental service at the chapel, and at this communion 
there were negro communicants, much to Asbury's 
delight. Things, however, did not go to suit him. 
He was sure that he was right, but the stewards 
did not see it so, and at last he was constrained to 
take the chief among them, Mr. Lupton, to task. He 
told him plainly of how he avoided him, of how he did 
not attend the leaders' meeting, how he appeared to 
dissimulate, opposed the rules, and consulted peo- 



Francis Asbury. 13 

pie not in the society. Mr. Asbury was not twenty- 
seven years old, and had been less than a year in 
America, and Mr. Lupton was a portly merchant, 
the wealthiest man in his charge; and so the daring 
young man was taken to task by Mr. Newton, as all 
who have done the like are to this day. Mr. New- 
ton complained of the manner in which the w T orthy 
Lupton had been treated, and told Mr. Asbury plain- 
ly that he preached the people away, and that the 
whole work would be destroyed by him. This was 
very painful, all of it; but just then he received a 
letter from Mr. Wesley urging him to mind all 
things, great and small, in the discipline; and so he 
read the letter to the society, and went on his way 
in spite of Mr. Lupton and Mr. Newton. The three 
months of his time in New York, how T ever, were 
nearly over, and they soon ended, and he left for his 
new work in Maryland.* 

*The facts concerning the New York society are largely 
drawn from that valuable book, " Wakeley's Lost Chapters." 



CHAPTER III. 

1772. 

Journey to Maryland — Bohemia Manor — Strawbridge — Freder- 
ick County — View of Maryland — Asbury's First Round — 
Goes to Baltimore — View of Baltimore — Into Kent County — 
Conflict with the Parson — Sickness. 

TO no man does Maryland owe a greater debt 
than to Francis Asbury. He worked a part 
of every year for nearly fifty years in her borders, 
and in his palmy days gave to her his best labor. 
He claimed Maryland as his home, his dearest friends 
were among her people, and near Baltimore his body 
rests. He came to America in the fall of 1771, and 
in the fall of 1772 he went to Maryland to aid Straw- 
bridge, who had been at work for six years, and 
who had laid out the circuit which Asbury was now 
to travel. Strawbridge had joined him in Phila- 
delphia, and he and Asbury began their journey to 
Maryland. They made their first stop at Bohemia 
Manor. This was in Cecil county, Maryland, near 
the Delaware line, and had been a favorite stopping 
place of Whitefield's. The section was settled by 
old English and Huguenot families; and as Mr. 
Whitefield came southward he found warm sympa- 
thizers among these large planters. The Bayards, 
Bouchelles, and Herseys lived here; and Mr. Wright, 
Mr. Asbury's colleague, had been so delighted with 
the people that he had spent his first three months 
almost altogether among them. He was so much 
attached to them that it was feared he would settle 
(14) 



Francis As bury. 15 

there. We find many allusions to this excellent 
neighborhood in the journals of the earlier preach- 
ers. To reach Bohemia they came through New- 
castle and Chester, in Delaware, crossed the river 
at a place he calls Susquehanna, and began their 
first round in western Maryland. 

Six years before, Strawbridge, a fervid young 
Irishman, found himself in Frederick county, a pen- 
niless immigrant. Around him w T as a large and 
comparatively new settlement of English people. 
Some of them were Quakers ; many of them, like him- 
self, Church-of-England people, but, unlike himself, 
they were merely nominal Christians. They were 
many of them well-to-do tobacco planters, with quite 
a number of slaves, comfortable in their circum- 
stances, easy in their lives, orthodox in their faith, 
but entirely ignorant of anything like spiritual re- 
ligion. The gifted, earnest, pious young Irishman 
began on his own motion to hold meetings among 
them, and organized them into Methodist societies. 
His preaching made a profound impression on the 
community, and some of the best people in it joined 
the society. They built a little log church, which 
Asbury said was the first in America, and of which 
we shall hear after awhile. When Boardman and 
Pilmoor came, they found Strawbridge hard at 
work; and now that a regular circuit had been laid 
out, Asbury came to aid him. Asbury had been 
only among the small farmers of New York and New 
Jersey, but he now found himself in a colony where 
there were large plantations and many slaves. The 
interior part of this country had been settled for not 
much more than fifty years; and as land was very 



16 Francis As bury. 

cheap, and when first opened very fertile, and as 
negro labor was easily secured, the wealth of the 
country was already considerable. 

Although Maryland had been settled by the Cath- 
olics, the Episcopal Church was now the established 
one; but all classes of Christian people were tol- 
erated, and in this colony alone were the Roman 
Catholics in any number. They were, however, con- 
fined to the western shore, and were not many in 
proportion to the Protestant population. The Quak- 
ers were numerous, and there were a few Baptists. 
The bulk of the population were Church-of -England 
people in their affiliations. The journals of Asbury, 
which were very full, reveal the religious destitu- 
tion of this part of Maryland. He mentions the 
church in Baltimore, the church in w T hich Parson 
West preached in upper Harford, a church in Fred- 
erick City, and a church at Chestertown in Kent. 
These were all the established churches he mentions. 
There were in Baltimore (then a city of perhaps six 
thousand people) churches of several denominations, 
but, as far as we can see, few of any name outside 
of it. 

The preaching of Strawbridge had been in private 
houses, and Asbury found these various stations 
opened to him. A view of the condition of things 
in Maryland at that time can be secured only by 
looking with some care into the mention he makes 
of the various homes which received him. He says 
that before Strawbridge came the people had been 
swearers, cock-fighters, horse-racers, and drunkards, 
but had become greatly changed. William Watters 
and Joshua Owings, two sterling young men, had 






Francis As bury. 17 

been led by Strawbridge to give themselves to the 
traveling ministry, while Nathan Perigau and Hen- 
ry Watters were lay preachers. Strawbridge had 
preached extensively in Baltimore, Harford, Car- 
roll, and Howard counties, and had secured the con- 
version of a number of most excellent people. The 
work of Strawbridge has not received its proper con- 
sideration. Mr. Asbury and the strong-willed Irish- 
man did not always agree, and, it may be, he did not 
rate his work as highly as it should have been rated ; 
but the journals of Asbury show at least something 
of what had already been accomplished by his pred- 
ecessor. 

The two preachers had begun their round in Har- 
ford, and turned their course tow r ard the northwest- 
ern part of the state. They were received into the 
homes of the planters, and for the first time since 
Asbury had been in America he found himself in 
their houses. He was a stern young Englishman of 
the straitest Wesleyan views, and when he visited 
Dr. Warfield he was much shocked by the extrava- 
gant headdresses of the polite ladies he met there. 
He went to Frederick City on this round. Here he 
found a considerable town. It had in it now two 
German churches (the Lutheran and the Reformed), 
an Episcopal and a Roman Catholic church. He 
went over into the Virginia Colony to Winchester, 
where he preached in an unfinished house. On his 
return to Maryland he stopped and preached at 
Joshua Owings's,who had been one of Strawbridge's 
first adherents. The widow Bond, whose husband 
was a Quaker, and whose descendants have been so 
distinguished as Methodists (for she was the grand^ 
^2 



18 Francis Asbuhy. 

mother of Thomas E. Bond, Sr., and the great-grand- 
mother of Thomas E. Bond, Jr., the distinguished 
editor), received him into her house, which was a 
preaching place; and Henry Watters, the brother of 
William and Nicholas Watters, both of whom be- 
came distinguished as Methodist preachers, was an- 
other whom he met on his journey. Samuel Merry- 
man, a pious Church-of-England man, who lived in 
a beautiful valley some twenty miles from Balti- 
more, and John Emory, the father of Bishop Emory 
and the grandfather of Robert Emory, were already 
Methodists. From the home of Emory, which was 
only a few miles from Baltimore, he made his first 
entry into Baltimore town on December 25, 1772. 
An old map of Baltimore town, made some thirty 
years before Asbury came, shows that w T here the 
busy city is now there were at that time only the pos- 
sibilities of one; but in these thirty years it had 
grown rapidly, and from Jones's Run on the east to 
what is now Hanover street on the west, and from 
Main (now Baltimore) street to the Bay, it was some- 
what thickly settled. M. de Warville, who visited 
it in 1789, says the streets were unpaved and very 
filthy, and there were about fourteen thousand peo 
pie in it. The country through which he passed to 
reach it was badly tilled, and the slaves were naked 
and poorly fed; but the philosopher was in no hu- 
mor to see anything good in a slaveholding colony. 

Where Asbury preached on this visit he does not 
say, nor do we know who entertained him; but on 
his return we know he preached in the house of the 
widow Tribulet, a member of the German Reformed 
Church, at the corner of Tribulet alley and Main 



Francis As bury. 19 

(now Baltimore) street, and in the house of Captain 
Paten, a clever and well-to-do Irishman, at the 
Point. From Baltimore, in company with several 
good women — the widow Huling, Mrs. Rogers, and 
some others — he went to Nathaniel Perigau's, six 
miles from the city. Nathaniel Perigau was con- 
verted under the preaching of Strawbridge, and be- 
gan at once to w T ork, as did Owings and Watters. 
He was the means of the conversion of Philip Gatch. 
Baltimore county was a very large county, in- 
cluding what is now several counties. Baltimore, 
which was at this time a small town, and Joppa, % on 
the Gunpowder River, which was at that time a de- 
clining port, were the only towns of any size in this 
western part of Maryland. Most of the people were 
poor, and lived in a plain way. Some families pos- 
sessed a large holding of land and a considerable 
body of negroes. There were the Howards, Goughs, 
Ridgeleys, Carrolls, Eagers, and others, who had 
large estates near the new city; but the mass of the 
people were like Strawbridge — if they owned their 
land, they had little besides. They lived in log 
houses, and in a very simple way. The country im- 
mediately around Baltimore was fertile, and the 
country people came to the Point to hear this zeal- 
ous young Englishman. It is likely that at this time 
he became the means of the conversion of Sarah 
Gough, who, with her husband, was for so long a 
time his most devoted friend. According to Dr. At- 
kinson, Mr. Pilmoor had organized a society in the 
city some time before Asbury came; if so, Asbury 
makes no mention of it, nor does he speak of organiz- 
ing one himself on this visit. He had a large circuit, 



20 Francis Asbury. 

which included all western Maryland. He belonged 
to the race of circuit riders. He preached in the 
city on Sunday , and went to the country, where he 
preached every day. The roads were execrable; the 
cold was very severe. In going to an appointment, 
the very tears, as they fell, were frozen; but still he 
went on. 

The preachers met in quarterly meeting to divide 
out the work, to receive their stipends, and to consult 
about matters. Mr. Asbury, Mr. Strawbridge, Mr. 
King, and Isaac Rollins were at the Conference. 
The Conference met at James Presbury's, in what 
was then Baltimore county, now Harford county, 
Maryland, on the 23d of December, 1772. Although 
this is the first Quarterly Conference of which we 
have record, it is evident that others had been held 
by Mr. Strawbridge, who had begun to work on his 
own responsibility, and at these he administered 
the sacrament. Mr. Boardman had quietly acqui- 
esced in that innovation, but Mr. Asbury did not 
think it the thing to do. Mr. Wesley had not done 
so, nor had he permitted his preachers to do so. Mr. 
Boardman had not, Mr. Asbury had not, and he 
could not consent to this young Irishman's course; 
but for the sake of peace he withdrew his objec- 
tions, and Strawbridge administered the sacrament 
to no one's hurt as far as we can see. On Sunday 
Mi\ Asbury took the sacrament from the regularly 
ordained parson West. The funds were divided, 
and for his three months' work Mr. Strawbridge re- 
ceived £8 and King and Asbury £6 each. He 
preached at this quarterly meeting, and gives us in 
his journal a skeleton of his sermon, which was suf- 



Francis As bury. 21 

ficiently practical, and, like most of the sermons of 
those days, covered all the ground. The text was, 
"Take heed unto yourselves." "1. Take heed to 
your spirits. 2. Take heed to your practices. >$. 
Take heed to your doctrines. 4. Take heed to your 
flocks: (1) Those under conviction; (2) Those that 
are true believers; (3) Those that are sorely tempted; 
(4) Those groaning for full redemption; (5) Those 
who have backslidden." The appointments were 
now made by a kind of mutual agreement, and Mr. 
Asbury came to the Baltimore Circuit again. Be- 
fore this Conference he opened a new field. 

On the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, 
nearly opposite the counties of Baltimore and Har- 
ford, is and was the old county of Kent. It was the 
first part of the state of Maryland which was set- 
tled, and was at this time thickly populated. The 
settlers were almost entirely English people. The 
large German element in western Maryland had no 
place here. The people were generally well-to-do 
planters, who lived in the easy way of those times, 
and were connected with the Establishment. Meth- 
odism had not made any decided impression on them 
up to this time, but they were not, perhaps, entirely 
unacquainted with the Methodist preacher, and 
some of them were quite friendly to the Methodist 
movement. Strawbridge and King had probably 
made a tour through Kent; but if so, they had or- 
ganized no societies. 

The rector of the parish, however, was not dis- 
posed to welcome the intruder on his domain. Said 
Mr. Asbury: "Mr. E. came to me, and desired to 
know who I was and whether I was licensed. I 



22 Francis As bury. 

told him who I was. He spoke great swelling words, 
and told me he had authority over the people, as he 
was charged with the care of their souls, and that 1 
could not and should not preach; and if I did, he 
would proceed against me according to the law. 
I let him know that I came to preach, and preach I 
would, and further asked him if he had authority 
over the people and was charged with the care of 
their souls, and if he was a justice of the peace, and 
said I thought he had nothing to do with me. He 
charged me with making a schism. I told him that 
I did not draw the people from the church, and 
asked him if his church was then open. He told me 
I hindered the people from their work. But I asked 
him if fairs and horse races did not hinder them. 
I further told him that I came to help him. He 
said he had not hired an assistant, and did not want 
my help. I told him if there were no swearers or 
other sinners, he was sufficient. But he said, 'What 
did you come for?' I replied, 'To turn sinners to 
God.' He said, ' Cannot I do that as w r ell as you?' 
I told him I had an ' authority from God.' He then 
laughed at me, and said, 'You are a fine fellow in- 
deed,' I told him I did not do this to invalidate his 
authority, and also gave him to understand that I 
did not wish to dispute with him ; but he said he had 
business with me, and came into the house in a great 
rage. I began to preach, and urged the people to 
repent and turn from their transgressions, that in- 
iquity should not be their ruin. After preaching, 
the parson went out and told the people they did 
wrong in coming to hear me; that I spoke against 
learning." 



Francis As bury. 23 

As the people had little use for the parson, and 
little taste for paying the tobacco demanded for his 
support, this encounter did the young circuit rider 
no harm, but rather added to his popularity. He 
found a good field for his work here, but he seems 
to have tarried but a little while, and then he went 
northward to the head of the Elk River and over 
into Delaware. His work during this visit seems 
to have been that of an explorer. He does not ap- 
pear to have organized societies, but preached, as 
he went, to white and black. 

His stay in Maryland was nearing its close. Mr. 
Pilmoor was, perhaps, the ruling spirit among the 
preachers, and he was not pleased with some things 
his younger colleague did; and while Asbury was 
on this visit he received a letter from him. He does 
not tell us what was in it, but speaks of it as "such 
a letter" The fact was doubtless that the younger 
man had shown his independence, and Mr. Pilmoor 
thought it was his duty to curb him. Asbury com- 
forted himself with saying and feeling that God 
knew. Poor Francis, as he called himself, was 
doomed all his life, and, as far as that is concerned, 
for all the years since he passed away, to be misun- 
derstood, and his motives misread; and perhaps he 
did no little of the same work when he made up 
his verdict concerning other people. 

The upper part of Maryland bordering on Penn- 
sylvania was in his circuit, and Mr. Strawbridge, 
Abraham Whitworth, and Mr. King met him at the 
quarterly meeting at Susquehanna. The sacrament 
does not seem to have been administered at this 
time, but strict inquiry was made into the state of 



24 Francis As bury. 

the societies. It was thought there were no disor^ 
derly members in the societies. The people paid 
their debts, but the questions as to whether there 
was no dram-drinking, whether band meetings were 
kept up, and as to whether the preachers were blame- 
less, are not answered. 

Mr. Asbury, after this Conference, went to Balti- 
more, but only to get ready for his journey to New 
York. He had spent his first six months in Mary- 
land, and had gone over nearly all the western part 
of the state, but did his main work in what are now 
Baltimore and Harford counties, in the meantime 
paying a visit to Kent and Delaware. 

The families he met with give us a glimpse of 
what kind of people the first Maryland Methodists 
were. Henry Watters, the brother- of William and 
Nicholas Watters, was one of his first hearers. He 
was already in the society. Charles Ridgeley, Dr. 
Warfield, Mr. Giles, Joseph Dallam, and Joshua 
Owings, Mrs. Huling, Mrs. Rogers, Nathan Peri- 
gau, James Presbury, who w T as a relative of Free- 
born Garrettson, Mr. Merryman, and Mr. Emory, 
were all of them among his hearers, and at many of 
their houses he had a preaching place. The Quak- 
ers were particularly kind to the early Methodists, 
and he mentions them very often. Over in Kent 
Samuel Hinson, one of the old settlers, and a mem- 
ber of a distinguished family, entertained him, and 
became a constant friend. There was in Kent a 
Hinson's chapel named, doubtless, for him. He 
preached very earnestly on his favorite theme, "Per- 
fect Love;" and while he did not profess it himself, 
he was earnest in seeking it and urging all to seek it. 



Francis AsburT. 25 

Those who are familiar with Maryland and the 
families of Maryland can see what impression had 
even now been made. Mr. Asbury seems to haA r e 
made a greater impression upon Baltimore and the 
Point than any who had preceded him. There were 
now at work in that part of Maryland quite a num- 
ber of workers, and at the Conference which met in 
June, 1773, there were four preachers sent to Balti- 
more, and five hundred members of the society were 
reported. In New York and Philadelphia there 
were one hundred and eighty each; in Virginia, one 
hundred ; in New Jersey, two hundred ; but in Mary- 
land, five hundred. They were chiefly found in Har- 
ford, Baltimore, and Frederick counties. 

After this Conference he returned to Baltimore, 
but only to get ready for his journey to New York, 
to which place he went early in 1773. 



CHAPTER IV. 

1773-1774. 

Asbury in Maryland Again — Goes to New York — To Philadel- 
phia — Mr. Eankin's Arrival — The First General Conference — 
Maryland Once More. 

MR. WESLEY had appointed Asbury assist- 
ant in charge of the work, but he took be- 
sides a regular circuit, and was in New Y r ork in May. 
He only remained one week, however, and then went 
to Philadelphia,, visiting Staten Island by the way. 
He kept his journal with care, but says little of the 
incidents of his outer life, and merely makes record 
of his religious experience and of the sermons he 
preached. He was not thirty years old, but his pi- 
ety was of the solidest sort, verging toward asceti- 
cism. Judging from his journal there seems never 
to have been a single intermission in his religious 
fervor, but he had seasons of great depression. 

Reinforcements had been called for from En- 
gland and sent, and on June 1st Mr. Thomas Ran- 
kin, Mr. George Shadford, and Mr. Yearby reached 
Philadelphia direct from England, and from Mr. 
Wesley. 

Mr. Rankin superseded Mr. Asbury as general as- 
sistant, and immediately took charge of the socie- 
ties. He preached his first sermon in America in 
Philadelphia, and Mr. Asbury thought he would not 
be admired as a preacher, but he had good hope that 
as a disciplinarian he would do well. 

While he was in Philadelphia, like a good church- 
(26) 



Francis As bury. 27 

man as he was, he went to church to receive the sac- 
rament; and then the next week Mr. Rankin and 
himself went to New T York, where Mr. Richard 
Wright was. Mr. Wright does not seem to have 
done anything grievously wrong, but he did not 
please his more serious brothers; and the sight of 
him and other concurring circumstances " affected 
Mr. Rankin so that he seemed to be cast dow r n in 
his mind/' but after Mr. Asbury' s sermon his spirits 
revived, and in the afternoon Mr. Rankin, Captain 
Webb, Mr. Wright, and Mr. Asbury all went to St. 
Paul's and received the sacrament. 

Mr. Asbury left his new superintendent in the city 
and visited his old friend Justice Wright on Staten 
Island. He here found at his house one who really 
believed that we were regenerate before we repent- 
ed. He gave the obstinate Presbyterian Mr. Fletch- 
er's second Check, then just from the press, fully 
persuaded, we doubt not, that if that failed to cure 
his heresy, his case was hopeless. Mr. Asbury soon 
returned to New York and went to work. 

Mr. Lupton was still a little hard to please, and 
charged the stern Asbury with winking at the fol- 
lies of the people, and said some other hard things 
sufficiently painful to the sensitive young preacher; 
but as he was no longer general assistant, and was 
not likely to stay long in New York, he bore the in- 
dignity that the portly steward put upon him, and 
went calmly on his way. 

There had not been up to this time a Conference of 
all the preachers. Some of them had met together in 
their quarterly meetings, but it w r as now decided to 
call a General Conference. The name given to the 



28 Francis Asbuby. 

little assembly of Methodist preachers which met in 
Philadelphia in June, 1773, is the only feature of re- 
semblance to the body of delegates who now meet un- 
der that name every four years. The minutes of this 
Conference have been preserved. They cover about 
half a page of octavo paper. There w ere ten preach- 
ers present and one thousand one hunderd and sixty 
members reported as in the society, of which Mary- 
land had live hundred, and Virginia one hundred. 
Thomas Rankin presided, and fixed the appoint- 
ments. Mr. Asbury, Mr. Whitworth, and Mr. Year- 
by were sent to Maryland, to take up the work so 
well begun. 

Mr. Asbury went to his circuit and came again to 
Baltimore; and Mrs. Tribulet's new house, on Main 
street and Tribulet's alley, was freely lent for a 
preaching place. When it was known that there 
was to be preaching, he had a good congregation. 
He made another visit to Kent, and to his friend 
Mr. Hinson's. He had sent poor, rough, and, alas! 
unreliable Isaac Rollins to work in Kent, but the 
people w 7 ould not bear with his rough address and 
perhaps slack morals. 

We may now get an outline of Asbury's circuit. 
With Baltimore for a center, he went to Patapsco 
Neck; then to Charles Harriman's; then to James 
Presbury's, up the Bay; then over to Kent, on the 
eastern shore; then, recrossing the Bay, he went to 
Watters's and Dallam's, and to Pipe Creek. His 
circuit took him into the midst of the most malari- 
ous section of Maryland and at the sickly season, 
and he had a severe bilious attack which terminated 
in a quartan ague. In studying his journal, which 



Francis As bury. 29 

is an exceedingly dry detail of events, we are able 
to make out only the bare outlines of the work. 
There are evidences in it of a deep religious interest 
among some of the people. The doctrine of a sound, 
conscious conversion and the duty of a rigid adher- 
ence to the General Rules, and seeking with all ear- 
nestness for perfect love, were the burden of every 
sermon. He made no compromises; he was intense- 
ly in earnest, and so impressed himself on all who 
heard him. A protracted meeting was then an un- 
known thing. The preacher preached and went on 
his way. 

He was now introduced by his good sister Hu- 
ling into a family which did much for the struggling 
society. This was the family of Philip Rogers. As- 
bury's prayer was that the wicked man might be- 
come a disciple of Jesus, wiiich prayer was gracious- 
ly answered. The first revival in Baltimore began 
now to cheer him. He remained in Baltimore for 
a month, but no service like to the modern pro- 
tracted meeting was held. He preached on Sunday 
three times, and on Wednesday night, and expected 
results at the regular service. During all this time 
he was really an invalid; a most obstinate attack of 
ague kept him in torture a large part of the time, 
but no sooner was the fever gone than he was at 
work again. 

He was not a man to be trifled with. He knew 
his rights, and asserted them. He had taken out a 
regular license from the authorities under the tol- 
eration act, and demanded protection; and when 
certain drunken fellows of the baser sort raised a 
riot at the widow Tribulet's, which was promptly 



30 Francis As bury. 

suppressed by Philip Rogers, who had been their 
companion in sin, Mr. Asbury advised her to have 
them prosecuted, and it was no fault of his that they 
did not receive the punishment which they justly 
deserved. 

The house of the good widow was not large 
enough to hold the people, and Mr. Moore invited 
them to his house. A church building was a neces- 
sity, but Asbury felt that it was too great a burden 
for him to undertake to build it. He went out on 
his country tour, and when he returned he found 
that William Moore had raised £100 and Philip Rog- 
ers had taken up two lots. These lots were on Love- 
ly Lane. The November before this Jesse Hollings- 
worth, George Wells, Richard Moale, George Rob- 
inson, and John Woodward purchased a lot on 
Strawberry Alley on which to erect a church, and 
"on the 30th of the month," Mr. Asbury said, "we 
agreed with Mr. L. to begin the brick work of the 
church," which, according to Stevens, was com- 
menced in November, 1774. On April 18, 1774, the 
foundation of the house in Baltimore was laid, and 
by the middle of October it was so far completed that 
they were able to preach in it. Stevens says the 
Strawberry Alley church was of brick, forty-one feet 
in length and thirty in width; that its openingwas on 
Fleet street; that its pulpit was very high, and over 
it hung the sounding board. It was given to the ne- 
groes as early as 1801. 

There seems to have been a constant revival in 
Baltimore, and Methodism made another inroad on 
the ranks of the godless and wealthy planters about 
the city. Mr. Gough and Mr. Charles Ridgeley and 



Francis As bury. 31 

Mr. Carroll attended the preaching of Mr. Asburv; 
and Captain Kidgeley was awakened, and Mr. Gough 
after this was converted and joined the society. 
Asburv had now two very plain brick chapels in 
which to preach, one at the Point and one in the 
city. Unornamented, uncomfortable houses they 
were, but they were for his use. They were simply 
brick, barn-like buildings, with rows of backless 
benches, a high pulpit, and a sounding board. The 
Methodists who attended the services here were 
drilled according to the English model, for Asburv 
was almost a Methodist ritualist. The lively song, 
the fervent prayer, the noisy sermon, then the ear- 
nest song came in regular order. The last two 
lines of the hymn sung, the congregation wheeled 
right about face, and, after repeating them, they all 
bowed on their knees for prayer. All were dressed 
alike in sober stuff, cut in the Methodist pattern, 
and all. alike eschewed ruffles, rings, and feathers. 
There was no stove in the chapel, but they made up 
for the want of artificial heat by their zeal. These 
noisy meetings and lively sermons drew quite a con- 
gregation to the chapel, and in the Strawberry Alley 
and Lovely Lane chapels there was a decided inter- 
est all the time, and probably Mr. Asburv was the 
most interesting preacher in Baltimore. He could, 
however, stay only three months, and then he went 
to Norfolk, and it was quite a twelvemonth before 
he was in Maryland again. 

Asbury's journal not only gives us an account of 
his work for the Church, but is filled with personal 
allusions, and we see what were his spiritual exer- 
cises and what his intellectual pursuits. 



32 Francis As bury. 

The whole story of his religious life at this time 
may be found in a few expressions. All is presented 
in them. He was thoroughly consecrated to God, 
and had but one fiim ? and that was to do his will 
perfectly. He had a varying experience as far as 
feeling was concerned; sometimes he was much de- 
pressed, sometimes he was full of peace, sometimes 
severely tempted, but he was always triumphant. 
It mattered not how he felt, his work was always 
done. 

Mr. Rankin did not understand him. He under- 
rated him, and perhaps Mr. Asbury was a little sus- 
picious of Mr. Rankin, and thought his motives oth- 
er than they were. He had, however, no serious dis- 
agreement with him wiiile he was in Maryland dur- 
ing this stay. 

He was very diligent in reading, and his reading 
was of the solidest kind — NeaPs History of the Puri- 
tans, the Life of Calvin, the Reign of Christ, by 
Guiso, and Church history. One can hardly see 
how he could have found time for any reading or 
study, but he was constantly at work. 

His old friend Captain Webb came out to see 
him, and remained in Baltimore for a little while. 
The Conference was to meet at Philadelphia the 
last of May, and after a year of useful work in Mary- 
land he went to its session. At this Conference the 
young Englishman who had come over the year be- 
fore, Joseph Yearby, was admitted into the con- 
nection, and Philip Gatch, a young Marylander; 
but Strawbridge was left out of the minutes, and 
Asbui^y ? s old companion, Richard Wright, was sent 
home. The stuff of which he was made was not 



Francis As bury. 33 

stern enough for the Spartan demands of men like 
Kankin and Asbury, and he was sent back to Mr, 
Wesley to be used by him in England, and disappears 
as far as we are concerned. 

Poor, brave, conscientious Strawbridge was not 
willing to submit to the demands made upon him. 
He was willing to preach, and willing to suffer, and 
willing to die; but he was not willing to refuse the 
ordinances to people who otherwise could not have 
(hem because these good churchmen said so. He 
was not punished, but simply ignored; and now 
(here were only nine assistants, but seven young 
helpers were admitted on trial. 
3 



CHAPTER V. 

1774. 

Mr. Asbury in New York and Baltimore — New York Again — 
Discouragements — Mr. Eankin and Mr. Asbury — Richard 
Wright Goes Home — Asbury's Discipline — Religious Expe- 
rience — Feebleness of Body— Goes Southward — Maryland 
Again. 

THE Conference of 1774 closed, and Mr. Asbury 
was appointed again to New York, and he was 
soon at his place. He was sick and tired. Mr. 
Rankin was overbearing and inconsiderate, and Mr. 
Asbury said that but for the fact that he was con- 
scious of the truth and goodness of the cause he 
would have gone back to England. He always 
found preaching a great help for his depressed spir- 
its, and after preaching he went to see the incorri- 
gible Wright. Alas! Wright had little taste for 
spiritual subjects, and his more pious associate says: 
"Lord, keep me from all superfluity of dress and 
from preaching empty stuff to please the ear. Thus 
he has fulfilled as a hireling his day." 

Asbury did not find all the congregation at the 
stone church glad to see him; indeed, it was de- 
cidedly otherwise. "Mr. C. had written him an 
abusive letter, and was still exerting his unfriendly 
force." Nearly all, however, were pleased to have 
him come again, and some were comforted with the 
assurance he gave that the society should be purged. 
He believed in drastic remedies, as one can see by 
(34) 



Francis As bury. 35 

reference to his memoranda of the medicines he 
used on himself, and he was not inclined to spare 
those committed to his care. 

The most rigid Montanist was not more uncom- 
promising than Asbury was. The society was no 
hospital to help the sick to convalescence, and if 
the tares were in the field, up the tares must come. 
The society was intended to help men and women to 
be good who were anxious to be so, and its rules were 
laid down for that purpose, and those rules "could 
be observed, and ought to be observed, and must be 
observed.'' He went to the St. Paul's Church as 
usual, but clearly saw where the gospel ministry 
was. Evidently it was in his view at the Methodist 
meetinghouse on John street. He went out into 
the meadows — where that was we do not know, but 
long lines of buildings have doubtless covered those 
meadows long ago — and there preached with plain- 
ness and power, and then preached in the city on 
Tuesday evening, and on Wednesday felt his heart 
glowing with divine love. " Blessed be God," he 
says, "my soul is kept in peace and power and love." 
His stay in New York was uneventful ; he spent the 
larger part of his time in the city and made regular 
preaching tours into the country round about. His 
old adversary, Mr. Lupton, was entirely changed. 
He was on the best of terms with Asbury now that 
his old favorite, Wright, was gone, 

The year in New York was one of great trial in 
many ways. The society was not what he thought 
it ought to be. There had been undue haste in re- 
ceiving people into it, and their hearts were not right. 
Mr. Rankin was not agreeable, and wrote him un- 



36 Francis Asbury. 

pleasant letters; his health was not good, for he 
had now been sick ten months and many days close- 
ly confined, but yet had preached three hundred 
times and ridden nearly two thousand miles. In 
all these trials and toils the heart of the pure young 
man was moving heavenward, and one day he says : 
"My soul is not so intently devoted to God as I would 
have it, though my desires for spiritual^ are very 
strong." Then again: "My heart enjoys great free- 
dom and much peace, and love both toward God 
and man. Lord, ever keep me from all sin and in- 
crease the graces of the Holy Spirit in my soul." "I 
was much blessed," he says, "at intercession to-day, 
but shut up in preaching to-night." He makes great 
discoveries of defects and weaknesses. He rises 
early, but is weak in body and mind. "Now his 
mind is calm and comfortable, then he is assaulted 
by heavy trials." "His soul is at peace, but longs 
for to be more devoted to God," "He feels some 
conviction for sleeping too long, and his mind is 
troubled about a conversation between Mr.R.,Mr.S., 
and himself." Then his mind is free, and his soul 
delights in God. "He taketh such possession of my 
heart as to keep out all desire for created objects. 
In due time I hope through Christ to enter into full 
fruition." 

I have cited these extracts from his journal, not 
that they are important as giving us a true insight 
into the man, but to show how varying was the rec- 
ord he made — as varying as the record of any con- 
scientious man who morbidly chronicles all the phas- 
es of his changing sensations. In all this time his 
faith never wavered, his love never abated, and his 



Francis As bury. 3? 

loyalty to God had not the slightest weakening; 
and one cannot but regret that he evidently put such 
great stress upon these phases of mere sensation, 
and cannot but regret as well the morbidity with 
which he looked upon the violation of some arbi- 
trary rules he had adopted as sins against God. Mr. 
William Law thought people slept too much, and Mr. 
John Wesley became his disciple, and he decided 
that six hours were enough for any man to sleep; 
and now poor Francis Asbury, sick and worn down, 
instead of staying in bed till he used nature's sweet 
restorer as physical health demanded, was dragging 
himself out of bed at an untimely hour or reproach- 
ing himself for sleeping too late because he did not 
do as Mr. AYesley said. One could only wish that 
his good old mother could have had the sick, tired 
preacher at her cottage for a few weeks, that she 
might have given him the benefit of her matronly 
counsel and care, and have put him to bed early in 
the night, and kept all things still and dark until 
the poor invalid had rested his fill. He, however, 
gives himself and his feelings what seems to us to 
be a little higher relative position than they were 
entitled to, and these extracts taken from his jour- 
nal almost as they come show how varying were his 
experiences. His pilgrim's progress had more than 
seven stages: "My soul is in peace, but longs to be 
more spiritual." "I do not sufficiently love God 
nor live by faith." "Oh, what happiness did my 
soul enjoy with God!" "My mind was much taken 
up with God, but I must lament that I am not per- 
fectly crucified with Christ." "My body was weak 
and my mind much tempted." "My soul is strength- 



38 Francis As bury. 

ened with might and filled with peace." ""My 
heart is grieved and groaneth for want of more 
holiness." "Unguarded and trivial conversation 
has brought a degree of spiritual deadness." There 
are in his journal many like entries, which we 
might extract, but these are sufficient. The man 
who never has a thrill of spiritual joy is sadly to be 
pitied, but he is to be pitied also who longs to be 
thrilling all the time. The man who has no sense of 
sorrow for sin, and to whom a conscience never 
wakes, is certainly to be pitied; but so is he wiio is 
ever searching for some reason why God should 
condemn him. 

He gives us a little insight into the way in which 
he prepared to preach, and his failure sometimes to 
succeed in expressing himself satisfactorily. He 
was diligent as a pastor, and mentions the case of a 
poor lost girl who sent for him when she was d} T ing, 
and to whose bedside he went at the risk of cen- 
sure. 

He kept up his week-day appointments in the 
country, and spent his time otherwise entirely in the 
city. There were then in all New York city and 
state only two hundred and twenty-two members, 
and while care had been used to purge the societies, 
there were still those whose want of consistency 
greatly grieved the young pastor's heart. The im- 
prudence of some and the loose conduct of others, 
he said, grieved him. He went regularly to hear 
the Dr. E. who filled St. Paul's pulpit. As he does 
not give his full name, and his remarks are by no 
means complimentary, we need not try to discover 
who he was. He went to church because he was a 



Francis As bury. 39 

good Christian, and it was his duty to go there; but 
the "doctor went on with his trumpery in his old 
strain, or was on his old tedious subject of the Lord's 
Supper. He cannot be at a loss in saying the same 
thing over and over." 

Mr. Asbury- s friends wished him to return to 
Baltimore, where his heart was, and where he was 
much needed^ but Mr. Kankin refused him permis- 
sion to go. There were now in Xew York Rankin, 
Webb, and Asbury; and Asbury asks what need 
can there be for two preachers to preach three times 
a week to sixty people. " On Thursday night about 
sixty people attended to hear Captain Webb. This 
is indeed a gloomy prospect." 

Mr. Asbury was sick, and things bore to him a 
somewhat somber look, and he was much grieved 
at Mr. Rankin's conversation. What the genial 
Scotchman said which grieved him, we do not know. 
In truth, like some other young invalids of real good- 
ness, he seems to have been somewhat easily grieved 
by the shortcomings of other people as well as by his 
own. The charge was too small for two men like 
Rankin and Asbury, and matters did not go smooth- 
ly. Asbury wrote Wesley, and read the letters to 
Rankin on the matters of difference. Rankin, As- 
bury said, "drove the people away by telling them 
how bad they were and what wonders he intended 
to do." At this day it looks to us that honest Tom- 
mie Rankin was a little arbitrary, and Mr. Asbury 
certainly so regarded him. 

One of Asbury's numerous ailments came early in 
the new year> with more than usual severity. It 
was an ulcerated throat, for which he kindlv gives 



40 Francis As bury. 

us a receipt for a gargle which is worth preserving: 
u Sage tea, honey, vinegar, and mustard; and after 
that another gargle of sage tea, alum, rose leaves, 
and loaf sugar, to strengthen the parts." The ail- 
ing throat brought Mr. Rankin to his bedside, and 
there was sweetness and love between them. At 
last Mr. Asbury decided to follow his heart and go 
southward, and so he took his journey to Baltimore. 
Whether Mr. Rankin consented we do not know, but 
there are intimations that Mr. Asbury acted on his 
own judgment. 

He rode on horseback, and preached as he went. 
One of his happiest homes when he was first in 
Maryland had been that of Joseph Dallam, where 
the good old matron had treated him like a son; and 
as it was on his way, he called to spend an hour, and 
mentions it in his journal. No man ever had a ten- 
derer love for his friends than Asbury had for those' 
who had dealt kindly with him, and in Maryland he 
had made his attachments which lasted through his 
life. The good Eliza Dallam is enshrined in the 
hearts of Methodists because of her tenderness to 
the young and often suffering missionary. Asbury 
never forgot a kindness, and was never ungrateful 
for one, and she had nursed him like a child when he 
was ill; he, therefore, never fails to mention her. 

He reached Baltimore, and found both at the Point 
and in the city large congregations to attend the 
ministry of their favorite preacher. It is evident 
that Asbury at this time was a preacher of greater 
power than he was in after years. After he became 
a bishop he was burdened with so many cares, and 
so constantly in motion and preached so frequently, 



Francis As bury. 4i 

that he did not impress men from the puipit as he did 
at this time. He still kept up his country appoint- 
ments, and mentions preaching at William Lynck's, 
where the wealthy Charles Ridgeley was present. 
Charles Ridgeley was the planter who gave Straw- 
bridge a home. Here at Lynch's he met Straw- 
bridge, and they agreed fully in their estimate of Mr. 
Rankin; but "all these matters," Mr. Asbury says, 
"I can silently commit to God,, who overrules both 
in earth and heaven." 

He went into the country, into the Neck, and 
preached on the week days. Mr. Otterbein, the good 
German pietist, who was Asbury's lifelong friend, 
and Benedict Swope, his colleague, were living in 
Baltimore and at the Point, and were ready to co- 
operate with him in his work. 

Thus in labors abundant and successful he spent 
his appointed time in Maryland. 



CHAPTER VI. 

1775. 

Asbury's First Work in Virginia — Norfolk — Portsmouth— Isaac 
Luke — County Work — Brunswick Circuit. 

AT the Conference of 1775 Francis Asbury was 
appointed to Norfolk, and in the last of May 
he stepped from the deck of one of the Bay sailing- 
boats, and entered upon his new field. One hundred 
and forty years before this the vestry of the Es- 
tablished Church in lower Norfolk had called Mr. 
Thomas Harrison, at a salary of £100, to take charge 
of Elizabeth River parish, and there was a preach- 
ing place in a private house; but now there was a 
new town on the left bank of the Elizabeth River, 
as well as the older on the other side. Norfolk, the 
younger of the twin sisters, was quite a flourishing 
little city. The tobacco which came from the then 
western counties of Virginia and from North Caro- 
lina, much of it, found shipment to England here; 
and into the port came the cargoes of rum, sugar, 
and molasses from the West Indies. There were 
two churches of the Church of England, one in Ports- 
mouth and one in Norfolk. A few years before this 
Robert Williams had preached his first sermon in 
Portsmouth on the courthouse steps, and Mr. Isaac 
Luke had become his adherent. Mr. Luke secured 
an old storeroom for him to preach in, and an old 
playhouse had been utilized in Norfolk. Mr. Pil- 
moor and Mr. Wright had been there, and there had 
(42) 



Francis As bury. 43 

been at least a foothold secured, and Mr. Asbury 
found the way laid out. 

The people of the twin cities were noted for their 
wickedness. Nothing else perhaps could have been 
expected from their surroundings; but now, to add 
to Mr. Asbury's difficulties, the w T ar excitement ran 
very high. The contrary winds which had tossed 
the little bark for a week on the Bay were but typical 
of the trials which were before him. There were 
only thirty nominal members, and few of these were 
willing to keep the rules; but yet he could gather 
these early summer mornings fifty people for morn- 
ing service, and one hundred and fifty at night. The 
change from the well-appointed charge in New York 
and the hospitable counties around Baltimore to 
the friendlessness of Norfolk w r as rather chilling, 
but he consoles himself with the thought that much 
ballast is necessary to keep the ship steady, and 
that he needed humility. He went on with his work, 
preaching in Norfolk and Portsmouth three times 
on Sunday, and meeting the society besides. On 
Tuesday he skirted the Dismal Swamp, and went 
into St. Bride's parish and w T orked between Norfolk 
and Portsmouth. Gloomy as was the prospect, they 
tried to get a subscription for a church building, but 
could raise only a little over $150. He had an ap- 
pointment six miles from Portsmouth toward Suf- 
folk, one at Mill Creek, one at Northwest Woods, one 
at Mr. H.'s, and one at Craney Island. The people 
came in from the country to Norfolk to hear him, and 
he went as he could into the country during the 
week, and in the cities on Sunday. He tried to en- 
force the rules, and as usual met with opposition. 



44 Francis As bury. 

While he was in the midst of these troubles, Mr. 
Rankin, Mr. Rodda, and Mr. Dromgoole wrote him 
that they had decided to go back to England; but 
he would not consent to leave these three thousand 
souls, and so he wrote to Mr. Shadford. His letter 
to them seems to have had its effect, for it was two 
years after this before the Englishmen did return. 
He worked faithfully and zealously, and in Septem- 
ber he had a three weeks' -attack of fever. The 
British marines landed soon after, and sacked the 
printing office, and carried off the press of the rebel- 
* lions printer, and altogether the times were out of 
joint. He, however, remained his four months out, 
and in November he began his journey southwest 
to Brunswick. During these days of almost exile, 
when his work seemed so fruitless, the devoted young 
preacher was filled with one earnest yearning; it 
was to be a holy man. He had peace and joy and 
constant communion with God, but he longed for 
perfect love. 

In Brunswick there was a glorious revival fire 
blazing. This section of Virginia at that time was 
very populous and very prosperous. The Bruns- 
wick Circuit included in its boundaries Brunswick, 
Sussex, Surry, Southampton, Isle of Wight, Dim 
widdie, Lunenburg, and Mecklenburg, and George 
Shadford had under his charge a corps of most ef- 
ficient assistants. There had been a most wonder- 
ful revival which began under the ministry of Dev- 
ereux Jarratt, and which Robert Williams, who 
died while Asbury was in Portsmouth, had done so 
much to advance. The country was thickly settled, 
and the well-to-do farmers, who peopled it and who 



Francis As bury. 45 

lived plainly, but in solid comfort, had been brought 
up as Church-of-England people, but the Church 
had secured no hold upon them. When the fervid 
Jarratt, and the saintly Williams, and the gifted 
Shadford had preached to these simple-hearted peo- 
ple the doctrines of the Methodists, they spoke in an 
unknown tongue, but at last such a revival as had 
not been known to this time in America began among 
them. After passing Southampton Courthouse, As- 
bury entered the circuit, and met Shadford and 
Francis Poythress, John Huey and James Hartley, 
who had such a hard time in Delaware a few years 
afterwards. Unhappily for us, Mr. Asbury adopted 
the English custom in his journal of merely using 
initials, and we are at a loss to mark out his line of 
work. He went through Brunswick into Dinwiddie, 
and met Mrs. Jarratt, who asked him to come into 
their parish. He went on by Parham's to Peters- 
burg. On Sunday he preached twice in Petersburg, 
where he said many of the people seemed to care for 
none of these things. He went to see Jarratt, and 
a friendship was thus begun which was never ended; 
and after the death of the good churchman, Asbury 
preached his funeral sermon. After having gone 
around this large circuit twice, which took him three 
months, he left Virginia for Philadelphia. 

It will be noticed that Shadford, Asbury, and Ran- 
kin seem to have made no allusions whatever to slav- 
ery in these their first visits. Their silence on this 
subject, and their keeping themselves closely to their 
legitimate work, was in decided contrast with the 
course taken years afterwards. It is not likely that 
slavery was more agreeable to the young preacher 



46 Francis As bury. 

now than it was ten years afterwards, but he did 
not then feel that his special mission was its over- 
throw. When he did yield to this pressure, he 
found that the course he had at first adopted was the 
only wise one. 

He now began his journey to Philadelphia, and 
calling on some friends in Maryland, preaching as 
he went, he at last reached his destination. 






CHAPTER VII. 

1776. 

The War Time — Mr. Wesley's Mistake — Asbury's View — Asbury 
Sick — Berkley Bath — Preaching — Conference at Deer Creek — 
Discussion on the Sacraments — Trouble with Mr. Rankin — 
Asbury Left Out of the Minutes — Goes to Annapolis — Test 
Oath — Retires into Delaware. 

TF1HE good Mr. Wesley, not satisfied with the 
JL troubles he had at home, and the paper battles 
with the Calyinists, and not content with making 
rules which his preachers were to keep and not to 
mend, had taken the colonies in hand, and was try- 
ing to show the English people that the taxation of 
the Americans was no tyranny, and that the rebels 
should disperse; but, -alas! the rebels did not dis- 
perse; and little good did his honestly- written pam- 
phlets do, and much embarrassment did they cause 
his preachers in America. It was thirty years after 
the war before the Methodist could purge himself 
from the charge of being a Tory. Mr. Rankin and 
Mr. Rodda and Mr. Boardman fully indorsed Mr. 
Wesley, but Mr. Asbury thought his course very un- 
wise. The Continental Congress met in Philadel- 
phia, and here Asbury was stationed, but it was to 
him as though it had not been. He had still that 
pertinacious ague, and was unable to get to Confer- 
ence. It met in May, and he was appointed to 
Maryland again. 

When he found that he was appointed to Balti- 
more, he began his journey southward; reached his 

(47) 



48 Francis Asbury. 

old friend Dallam's, and thence came to the city. 
He began his work with his accustomed earnest- 
ness. On the week days he went out into the coun- 
try to preach, and returned to the city for his Sun- 
day work. His child in the gospel, Philip Rogers, 
and his good wife were still faithful, and the rich 
Harry Gough and his lovely wife had been con- 
verted. Their elegant home at Perry Hall had now 
been opened to the Methodist preachers, and re- 
mained so for forty years. Gough was of noble 
family, and was the heir of a large estate in En- 
gland. He then was worth $300,000, and at this 
time would be rated as worth largely over $1,000,- 
000. He had been a frivolous, dissolute man, who 
had been influenced by his desire for amusement to 
go and hear Asbury. His wife had already been 
awakened, and he had opposed her; but now, when 
he heard Asbury, he was awakened and genuinely 
converted. He became a warm friend of Asbury, 
and we shall see him often in the course of his life. 

These were stirring times. The battles around 
Boston had been fought, and the Continental army 
had been organized; the Declaration of Independ- 
ence had been made; but Asbury in his journal 
makes no mention of these events as having taken 
place. He went on oblivious of everything but his 
work. The fact that Mr. Wesley had so unwisely 
intermeddled with the American matter, and writ- 
ten so sharply against the course of the colonies, 
and that so many of his preachers were Englishmen, 
made it a very disagreeable thing for Mr. Asbury to 
remain where he was exposed to suspicion, and at 
Nathan Perigau's he was fined £5 for preaching with- 



Francis As bury. 49 

out taking a license; but he went on his way, saying- 
nothing on the great political questions of the day. 
He says that while riding along the highway, soaring- 
out of the regions of his duty, he became inattentive 
to what immediately concerned him, and overset and 
badly broke his chaise. He could not get entirely 
well. The quartan ague that two years before had 
fixed itself on him, and the terrible putrid sore 
throat he had in New York, had so reduced him that 
he resolved to take a little respite from toil, and 
seek health; and as Mr. Gough and Mr. Merryman 
were going to the springs in Berkley, he went also. 

There were a number of people at the springs, and 
at the cottages of Mr. Gough and Mr. Merryman 
they had services every evening. His stay at the 
springs was very profitable to him both in soul and 
body. He preached nearly every day, visited the 
sick, went to the German settlement nine miles 
away and preached to the Germans; read De Renty 
and Haliburton and Walsh and Brainerd; prayed 
a great deal, and found much comfort in his soli- 
tary musings; and after a two weeks' stay left Bath 
with the opinion that it was the worst and best 
place in which he had been: the best for health, the 
worst for religion. 

He returned to his work in September. He 
preached at Bush Forest, Deer Creek, Nathan Per- 
igau's, the Forks, Merryman's, Green's, and kept up 
his weekly appointments at the Point and in the 
city. His circuit was large, but he had two young 
helpers. Appointments in the city were sometimes 
filled by others, and the services seem to have been 
kept up regularly. Watch-night services were not 
4 



50 Francis Asbury. 

only held then, as they are now, at the going out of 
the old year and the coming in of the new, but were 
also held occasionally without reference to any par- 
ticular time. 

The seat of war was somewhat remote from Mary- 
land, and while there was agitation there was little 
of actual disturbance. Mr. Asbury's companions, 
Mr. Rankin, Mr. Shadford, and Mr. Rodda, were pro- 
nounced Englishmen, and it is likely they sympa- 
thized with the mother country in the contest; at 
any rate, they determined to go back to England. 
Mr. Asbury had been longer in America than any of 
them, and if he did not sympathize with America he 
had no disposition to take sides against her nor to 
desert his flock, and could not make up his mind to 
go back, and so decided to remain. The Englishmen 
did not go back for the present, and, as Mr. Shadford 
was willing to take his place on the Baltimore Cir- 
cuit, Asbury decided to go to Annapolis and begin 
a new work. 

Annapolis was then, as it is now, the capital of Ma- 
ryland, and was the seat of much elegance, and, alas! 
of much wickedness, and especially infidelity. He 
went to the city, and preached his first sermon at the 
widow D.'s, and then preached in an old playhouse 
used as a church. In and around Annapolis he 
preached with small success until the yearly Confer- 
ence, which met in Deer Creek the 20th of May. 
This was the Conference at which the first note of 
serious discord was struck. The American preach- 
ers were restless under the condition of things, and, 
as they were largely in the majority, they were dis- 
posed to have the ordinances. Asbury and his Eng- 



Francis As bury. 51 

lish brethren recognized this as the beginning of di- 
vision from the English Wesleyans, and they sternly 
opposed it. When the appointments were made, 
Mr. Asbury's name did not appear as having an ap- 
pointment. Rodda and Shadford were appointed, 
and Mr. Rankin was general assistant. Mr. Asbury 
is mentioned as one of the assistants, but not other- 
wise. The Conference pledged itself to take no step 
to separate itself from the English brethren. 

Why his name was left out has not been explained, 
but the fact was that Mr. Wesley had ordered Mr. 
Asbury to return to England, and he would not go. 
Mr. Rankin did not understand his colleague, and 
wrote freely, if not favorably, about him to Mr. Wes- 
ley, and Mr. Wesley said in a letter to Mr. Rankin: 
"I doubt not that you and brother Asbury will part 
friends. I shall hope to see him at the Conference. 
He is quite an upright man. I apprehend he will 
go through his work more cheerfully when he is 
within* a little distance from me." And again: "I 
rejoice over honest Francis Asbury, and hope he 
will no more enter into temptation." Mr. Asbury 
could not take out a license to preach in Maryland 
without taking the oath, and he was not willing to 
do that; but the same thing was true of Shadford, 
and he was sent to Baltimore. As Mr. Rankin made 
the minute, it is likely that Mr. Asbury's name was 
left off by his authority. 

Asbury went from the Conference to the circuit 
he had traveled before he went to Conference. He 
spent a little w 7 hile at Cough's, and mentions that he 
had left off his tvig. To us of this day the custom 
of cutting off the natural hair and wearing an un- 



52 Francis As bub y. 

comfortable wig seems to rise to the height of ab- 
surdity; but even Mr. Asbury, who had great fear of 
the good women of society conforming to the world 
in their headdresses, wore his wig for five years after 
he came to America. 

He had a rather unfruitful field around Annapolis. 
He preached at the widow D.'s, at Mr. H.'s, Mr. J. 
P.'s, the schoolhouse, South River, and Maggoty. 
The congregation in Annapolis sometimes amounted 
to fifty, chiefly women. He preached very earnestly, 
if not very successfully. Mr. Rankin and himself had 
their usual collisions about appointments, and at last, 
in September, Mr. Rodda and Mr. Rankin went home. 

Mr. Asbury, in a letter to Joseph Benson, says: 
"Mr. Rankin was in favor of bringing the colonies 
into subjection at once." Mr. Rodda distributed the 
king's proclamation and ran away to the British 
fleet. Mr. Shadford and Mr. Asbury found matters 
getting too warm for their comfort. Mr. Shadford 
decided to go to England, and Mr. Asbury crossed 
the bay to the eastern shore early in January, 1778. 
Here, in Kent, he found his old friend Hinson, and 
saw that the seed he had sown when he came to Kent 
four years before had been fruitful, and there were 
flourishing societies now; but Maryland was not a 
safe refuge for him, and he went on to Delaware, 
where, near Dover, his old friend Thomas White 
had a home, and there he was gladly welcomed. 

He never returned to Maryland for pastoral work. 
He next came as Mr. Wesley's assistant, and then as 
the Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
America. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

1778. 

Life in Delaware — Thomas White — Asbury's Studies — Stormy 
Times — The Conference at Leesburg — Asbury's Called Con- 
ference — Troubles in the Conferences — Asbury's Hard Con- 
dition — A Truce Made. 

THE oath which was prescribed in Maryland, and 
which Asbury refused to take, was designed for 
those ministers who were suspected of secret sym- 
pathy with the king. The fine of £5, to which he 
alludes as collected three years before, was under 
the colonial law, and was laid on all unlicensed 
preachers. When he found, as he did early in 1778, 
that he must take an oath that he could not con- 
scientiously take, he resolved quietly to withdraw • 
from Maryland. Not far from Dover, in Delaware, 
lived a well-to-do farmer, Thomas White. He was 
judge of the county court, and was known as Judge 
White. He was a stanch Church-of-England man, 
and while he was not an enemy to the American 
cause he was not an active participant in the Rev- 
olution. He was a profoundly religious man, and 
was deeply attached to Asbury, who sought his home 
for seclusion. Here he remained for a part of three 
years, and had more time for study than at any other 
time in his life. 

Mr. Asbury had found time to study Greek and 
Hebrew, but his journal does not tell us when. For 
several years after he came to America there is no 
mention of this fact, but now in the quietude of his 

(53) 



54 Francis Asbuby* 

Delaware retreat he spends much time on the Greek 
Testament. He read the Testaments in Latin and 
Greek and the Old Testament Scriptures in Hebrew, 
and at Thomas White's home, and at that of Edward 
White, his brother, he now had his preaching places. 
It was dangerous to move about in Delaware at that 
time. J. Hartley had been arrested in Queen Anne 
county, Maryland, and imprisoned. Gatch had been 
assaulted and lost his eye, and Garrettson had been 
knocked from his horse, and shortly after this Thorn- 
White himself was arrested and carried to pris- 
on; and these were Americans, not Englishmen. 
Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Wesley had both rendered 
themselves obnoxious to the Americans by their 
course, and Mr. Asbury was Mr. Wesley's special 
representative. Mr. Asbury was afraid of no man; 
he seems never to have known what fear was; but 
he was afraid of reckless daring, and of refusing to 
heed the directions of Providence; and so he re- 
mained in seclusion, only preaching as he could get 
an opportunity. He had a good preaching place in 
the tobacco barn of Judge White, and while he did 
not leave his retreat to go any considerable distance, 
he preached somewhere nearly every day. He laid 
a plan for himself to travel and preach nine days in 
two weeks. He was constantly engaged in preach- 
ing or study, and especially in earnest spiritual ex- 
ercises. He did .not think he had secured that high- 
est of earthly boons to him, perfect love, but he was 
groaning after it. 

The Conference met in Leesburg, Virginia, May 19, - 
and while it was in session Mr. Cox held a quar- 
terly meeting in Judge White's barn in Delaware, 



F RAX CIS As BURY. 55 

and Mr. Asbury preached. Mr. Asbury does not 
mention the Annual Conference in Virginia at all in 
his journal; but while he says nothing of it, it is 
evident that he was greatly concerned on account 
of the state of the Church. The young Americans 
who were now in control of the Conference were 
without a leader. Kankin was gone from Amer- 
ica with all the English preachers except Asbury. 
Asbury had seen the temper of the young Amer- 
icans at Deer Creek the year before, when, as he 
said in his letter to Shadford, he had been una- 
ble to resist the tide in favor of separation. Per- 
haps he had no special desire to go to Leesburg, 
and as he did not go, the Conference entirely ig- 
nored him. He was not mentioned at all in the min- 
utes. It was evident to Asbury that matters were 
getting into a shape by no means pleasing to him, 
and he feared all the hard labor of these past years 
would come to naught. It was no time to discuss 
theories, he had to face a condition. He was the 
senior preacher on the continent. The Conference 
was entirely cut off from Mr. Wesley, and he decided 
as the senior to take an extraordinary step. He re- 
solved to call a Conference of such preachers as 
were within his reach, and take control of it. The 
regular Conference had assembled, and had made 
provision for a separation. He believed that unless 
something was done separation was inevitable, and 
he determined, if possible, to prevent it. It is not 
my province to express opinions, but to state facts, 
yet one can do no less than say for Asbury that he 
believed he was not usurping authority, and that he 
was doing what Mr. Wesley wished; and in that be- 



56 Francis Asbury. 

lief he was sustained by after facts, and bis course 
had Mr. Wesley's full indorsement. 

He wrote to his old friends Gatch, Dickins, and 
Dronigoole, urging them to interpose; and he called 
and took charge of a Conference in 1778. It is for 
the historian to give a full account of the little Con- 
ference, as Jesse Lee calls it. It recognized Asbury 
as chief pastor, and passed sundry resolutions, and 
proceeded as if it was the only ecclesiastical body 
among the Methodists. 

The few brethren who met with him were willing 
to cooperate with him, and he gave them their ap- 
pointments, took one for himself, and soon was hard 
at work. Though the war was going on, the revival 
in Delaware under Garrettson and others was truly 
wonderful. Asbury began now to venture out at 
greater distances from Judge White's, but he was 
still in seclusion and was diligent in the work of ad- 
vancing his spiritual welfare. One cannot but re- 
gret his attention to a certain class of books which 
led him, always so distrustful of himself, to draw 
such invidious comparisons between himself and 
others. The lives of De Renty, Haliburton, and 
Walsh he seems to have read more than any other 
books but his Bible, and they had no little to do 
with the deep depression under which oftentimes 
he sank. He was, however, no recluse. Philip 
Cox, the preacher in charge, had quarterly meet- 
ings at which he was present that were much like 
the camp meetings of an after day. People came 
from Sussex, Somerset, Queen Anne, Kent, New- 
castle in Delaware, and Philadelphia in Pennsyl- 
vania. Mr. McGaw, an Episcopal rector, adminis- 



Francis Asbuby. 57 

tered the sacraments, and there were six or seven 
hundred present. Mr. Asbury was an Episcopalian 
— he believed in bishops, and had no objection to 
prayer books. He says, September 10, 1779: "I be- 
gan reading Camper on Ordination. Much pomp 
was annexed to the clerical order. Though plausi- 
ble in its way, I believe the episcopal mode of ordi- 
nation to be more proper than that of presbyters." 
To this view he always held. To get a view of his 
untiring toils w r e take the record of a few r days. 

On Sunday he says: "I went to a people I tried 
near two years ago in vain. Monday I read thirteen 
chapters in Revelation, a hundred pages in Camper 
on the Consecrating of Bishops, and fifty pages in 
Salmon's Grammar." "It is plain to me the devil 
will let us read always if we will not pray." 

"Tuesday I read a few chapters in the New Testa- 
ment and seventy pages in Salmon's Grammar. 

"Wednesday, I am going up to Kent, and thence 
to Lewistown. 

"Thursday, called at the widow 7 Beauchamp's, 
who was sick but happy in the Lord." 

Rode to Lewistown: "I rode thirty miles, and on 
my way called to hear an Episcopal minister. He 
was legal to all intents and purposes." 

"Sunday, went to Lewistown, preached in the 
courthouse twice. Preached Monday at nine o'clock. 
Preached on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Fri- 
day." Never wearying, never ceasing, he was al- 
ways at work. 

These extracts are but samples of the entries in 
his journal when he was in retirement. No wonder 
he said he never did harder or better work at anv 



58 Francis AsburF. 

time than in these days of exile. Hartley, who had 
been licensed to preach when Asbury was in Vir- 
ginia, and who had been imprisoned in Maryland 
for preaching, had yielded to the temptation to mar- 
ry, and was wedded. The somewhat cynical As- 
bury says: "I find the care of a wife begins to hum- 
ble my young friend, and makes him very teachable. 
I have always thought he carried great sail, but he 
will have ballast now." The part of Delaware where 
he was at work was very populous, and perhaps few 
spots of earth have been blessed with a more able 
ministry than this section of Maryland was at this 
time. Freeborn Garrettson, Philip Cox, Francis As- 
bury, and Mr. McGaw, the Episcopal minister w T ho 
was the Devereux Jarratt of that state, were among 
the workers, and their success was great. 

The Conference of the year 1779, which Mr. As- 
bury had called, had adjourned to meet in Balti- 
more in 1780, and Mr. Asbury was in charge of it 
when it met. Of no one thing was he more firmly 
convinced than that he and those who were with him 
were the only regular Methodists in America. He 
had resolved at first to cut loose entirely from the 
Virginia brethren, then he decided if they w r ould com- 
ply with certain terms he would again affiliate with 
them. They had sent a peace commission, Gatch 
and Ellis, to Baltimore. Asbury offered them cer- 
tain conditions, which they promptly rejected. He 
then proposed that the matter of administering be 
deferred a twelvemonth. They thought that might 
do, and Asbury, Garrettson, and Watters decided to 
go to Fluvanna, which they did. Here, after all 
hope of reconciliation seems to have been lost, while 



Francis Asbury. 69 

Garrettson and Watters were praying, the noble Vir- 
ginians decided to wait another year, and there was 
harmony. Mr. Asbury was recognized as general 
assistant, and began what was really his episcopal 
work. 



CHAPTER IX. 

1781-1783. 

General Assistant — Conference in Baltimore — Settlement of 
Troubles — Through the Valley of Virginia— Allusion to 
Strawbridge — Through Eastern Virginia — First Visit to North 
Carolina — His Friends Among the Episcopal Clergy — Visits 
New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey — Barratt's Chapel, 1784 
—Letter from Asbury to Shadford. 

ASBUBY began his journal for the year 1781 
with this entry : " January 1, 2, 3, 4. Pain, pain, 
pain!" No wonder. He had been troubled again 
with his ulcerated throat, and took physic, and ap- 
plied two blisters afterwards — put one on the back 
of his neck and another behind the ear; had some 
blood taken from his tongue and some from the arm. 
This was on December 31, 1780; but he was soon 
able, despite this medication, to go on his way, and 
did most earnest work around his home in Delaware. 
He now went into Pennsylvania, where he met that 
wonderful man, Benjamin Abbott, or, as he writes 
it, Benjamin Abbitt. He visited the Philadelphia 
society, and preached in Pennsylvania and Dela- 
ware until April, when he crossed the Chesapeake 
Bay, and rode to Mr. Gough's to meet the Baltimore 
Conference. 

The Conference was to meet in Baltimore in May. 
Mr. Asbury determined to recognize none but those 
who stood with him on the old plan, as making the 
Conference. 

During this vear, 1781, according to the minutes, 

(60) 



Francis As bury. 61 

there were two Conferences held — one at Choptank, 
April 16, 1781; the other at Baltimore, April 24. 
Mr. Asbury inserts the minute which recognizes the 
smaller Conference as the true one. He says, May 
16: "After meeting, we rode about tw T enty miles to 
brother White's, where about twenty preachers met 
to hold a Conference." On the 21th he says: "Our 
Conference began at Baltimore, where several of the 
preachers attended from Virginia and North Caro- 
lina. All but one agreed to return to the old plan, 
and give up the administration of the ordinances. 
Our troubles seem to be over in that quarter. All 
was conducted in peace and love." 

When this Conference met, a pledge was asked for 
from those who would preach old Methodist doctrine 
and discountenance a separation. There were thir- 
ty-nine who signed this pledge. "Why was this 
Conference begun at Choptank?" Say the minutes: 
"To examine those who could not go to Baltimore. ' 
"Is there any precedent for this in the economy of 
Methodism?" "Yes; Mr. Wesley generally holds a 
Conference in Ireland." As Choptank was only a 
few days' ride from Baltimore, and as all the preach- 
ers who were there were in all likelihood in Balti- 
more afterwards, the answer does not seem quite 
satisfactory. John Dickins would not submit, and 
he desisted from traveling, to come back some years 
afterwards and die in the work. This was the end 
of the trouble about ordination. 

Asbury visited Martinsburg now for the first time. 
The beautiful section of Virginia known as the Val- 
ley of Virginia had been exposed to Indian forays 
until a very few years before this time, and had been 



62 Francis Asbury. 

occupied by daring settlers of an entirely different 
class from those with whom Mr. Asbury had been 
associated in eastern Virginia and Maryland. Ger- 
mans and Scotch-Irish people, intermixed with east- 
ern Virginians who were willing to face perils, made 
the population. Much of the country was very rug- 
ged, and the forests were wild; but he says: " Al- 
though alone, I have blessed company, and some- 
times think who so happy as myself." He found 
Methodists and a Methodist preacher even here. 
He says: "We had twelve miles to R.'s along a 
bushy, hilly road. A poor woman, with a little 
horse without a saddle, went with us up and down 
the hills; and when she came to the place appointed, 
the Lord met with and blessed her soul." 

He now went southward along the south branch 
of the Potomac. " Blessed be God," he says, "for 
health and peace. We found some difficulty in cross- 
ing the Capon River. Three men very kindly *car- 
ried us over in a canoe, and afterwards rode our 
horses over the stream without fee or reward. 
About five we reached W. R.'s. I laid me down to 
rest on a chest, and, using my clothes for a covering, 
slept pretty well. Here I found need of patience. 
The scenery was grand, though the roads w T ere 
rough." He had, he says, about three hundred peo- 
ple to hear him, but there were many whisky-drink- 
ers who brought with them so much of the powers 
of the devil that he had but little satisfaction in 
preaching. 

He found even here a few who were striving to be 
entirely sanctified, and says: "It is hard for those 
to preach this doctrine who have not experimentally 



Francis As bub y. 63 

attained it or are not striving with all their hearts 
to possess it." In these wilds he was reading Fletch- 
er's Checks, w r hich had been greatly blessed to him. 

In crossing the mountains with William Par- 
tridge, they were overtaken by night, so they secured 
their horses to some trees and waited quietly till the 
return of the day. They slept among the rocks, 
though much annoyed by the gnats. In all this 
tour, when he was in a house, he was compelled to 
sleep on the floor every night, but was full of grati- 
tude to God that he fared so well. 

He reached Leesburg July 31st, crossed over into 
Maryland, and went to the quarterly meeting, 
preaching as he went. He makes a somewhat pain- 
ful allusion, evidently to Strawbridge. He says: 
" Monday, September 2d, I visited the Bush Chapel. 
The people here once left us to follow another. 
Time was w T hen the labor of their leader was made 
a blessing to them; but pride is a busy sin. He is 
no more. Upon the whole, I am inclined to think 
that the Lord took him away in judgment because 
he was in the way to do hurt to the cause, and that 
he saved him in mercy, because from his deathbed 
conversation he appears to have hope in his end." 

One could wish this paragraph had not been writ- 
ten, and a partial biographer would be glad to ex- 
punge it; but an honest one cannot. Mr. Asburv 
was perhaps given to judging harshly those who did 
not see things as he saw them, and to attributing 
to them motives from which they were often free. 
Those who knew T Strawbridge best had the highest 
confidence in him and respect for him, and his death 
was, according to Garrettson, a very peaceful and 



64 Francis As bury. 

happy one. Happy is he who can judge justly one 
who he thinks is in grave error! 

Mr. Asbury was very busy visiting his old friends 
and the churches, and, under great weakness of body, 
preaching every day. He made a short visit to Phil- 
adelphia, and came into Delaware again, and once 
more came into Baltimore. While things in Virgin- 
ia were not so bad as he feared, yet there was need 
for him, if he would stamp out this spirit of separa- 
tion, to go there as speedily as possible; and so at 
the close of this year he went into Virginia again. 

In January, 1782, Mr. Asbury again entered Vir- 
ginia and worked with all ardor to suppress the 
spirit which clamored for the ordinances. His in- 
domitable will had nearly crushed it out, but still 
there was to be another Conference of the disaf- 
fected at Manakintown. He believed this would be 
the last struggle of a yielding party, but the yield- 
ing party in two years' time was the victorious one 
so far as the main issue was concerned. He rode 
into King George county to Stedham's. Stedham 
had been a famous racer in those days, but now he 
was the servant of Jesus Christ, and had given up 
his race horses. In October, 1781, the surrender at 
Yorktov/n had taken place, and Mr. Asbury was 
now in the midst of the desolations caused by the 
war. He says: "We find the smallpox and camp 
fever raging, and heard of several poor creatures, 
white and black, that had died on the road. Ah! 
we little know what belongs to war, and with all its 
train of evils, churches converted into hospitals and 
barracks, homes pillaged or burned." He rode to 
Mr, Jarratt's, below Petersburg, and met him again. 



Francis As bury. 65 

The influence of Mr. Jarratt over Mr. Asbury was 

manifestly very great, and it is quite evident that Mr. 
Asbury had a hope that the evangelical party of 
the Established Church and the Methodists would 
in some way coalesce, and that all the Episcopalians 
in the southern provinces would become Methodists 
while all continued to be Episcopalians. The na- 
ture of the situation, for which the party that Mr. 
Asbury was so sternly opposing was trying to pro- 
vide a remedy, is seen when he says in the entry: 
"Mr. Jarratt baptized A. C.,one of our young preach- 
ers.'' He went on his way from Jarratt's through 
Sussex and Xansemond, and preached at Ellis's; 
went to Lane's and Mabry's; met his good friend 
Dromgoole, in Mecklenburg, and passed again into 
Xorth Carolina and into the upper counties of that 
state, and then recrossed the line into Virginia. He 
says: "In that country I have to lodge half my nights 
in lofts where light may be seen through a hundred 
places, and it may be the cold wind at the same time 
blowing through as many, but through mercy I am 
kept from murmuring." He was at that time most 
earnest in preaching on sanctification; and while he 
makes no positive statement with regard to his own 
experience he says many things which would lead 
one to suppose that he claimed, if he did not profess, 
a grace he so constantly pressed upon others; and 
yet after saying one day, "My soul resteth in God 
from day to day and from moment to moment," a 
week later he says: "I have been much tried in vari- 
ous ways. I feel myself greatly humbled. This 
morning I poured out my soul to God in the granary, 
and was refreshed in my spirit." 
5 



66 Francis Asbury. 

He was hard at work trying to bring all the 
preachers who had been disaffected to harmonize 
with him in his views about the ordinances, and he 
had succeeded most wonderfully up to this time, 
and now Philip Bruce and James O'Kelly also were 
reconciled to him. Mr. Jarratt was in full accord 
with Asbury in all these measures, and was ready to 
cooperate with him, and attended the Conference at 
Ellis's meetinghouse and preached; and as soon as it 
was over, Mr. Asbury preached at Mr. Jarratt's barn. 

Asbury, with his determined will and admirable 
management, had now checked, if he had not com- 
pletety crushed out, the movement toward inde- 
pendency in Virginia; but it is evident from his 
after course that he knew the matter was merely in 
suspense, and that the old plan was only to be ad- 
hered to until Mr. Wesley could be heard from; and 
after results showed that even when Mr. Wesley was 
heard from the preachers were not disposed to blind- 
ly follow his directions. The preachers at the Con- 
ference, however, all signed the agreement, both at 
Ellis's and afterwards at Baltimore, agreeing to 
wait, and there was now concord. 

Asbury now made a visit to the western shore, to 
Calvert county, Maryland. This is the first mention 
of his visitation to this part of Maryland, where Meth- 
odism won such conquests in after time. It was a 
secluded peninsula on the western shore, inhabited 
by English people of simple tastes and warm hearts. 
From the western shore he went to Leesburg, Va., 
and made another journey through the northern part 
of what was then Virginia and what is now West 
Virginia. He rode sixtv miles over incrediblv bad 



Francis As bury. 67 

roads in two days, and preached in Shepherdstown 
to about two hundred people. He returned to Mary- 
land, and then went to Pennsylvania; then to Dela- 
ware and into East Virginia, and down through the 
war-desolated sections of the tide-water country^ 
where he ended the year 1782. He was in constant 
motion, and in the first part of 1783 he made a very 
extensive tour through the upper part of North Car- 
olina. He passed through Salem and went down 
as far south as Guilford, then back to Caswell, and 
then turned his face toward the eastern part of 
North Carolina, where he made another visit to 
Green Hill, "at whose house he preached/' he said, 
"to a proud and prayerless people ;" and it was while 
on this tour he heard the rumor of peace between 
England and America. 

The de facto bishop had established his lines, and 
now extended them across the mountains into Hol- 
ston, arid all over upper North Carolina and Vir- 
ginia, and Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 
Whenever it was practicable he had made a circuit 
and found a preacher for it, until now there were 
thirty-seven circuits and nearly fourteen thousand 
members. He now had his hands full, as he made 
a yearly visitation to all parts of the work. His cir- 
cuit began at New York, and took in New Jersey, 
the eastern parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, the 
eastern shore of Virginia and Maryland, and all of 
the then settled parts of Virginia, and along the 
northern part of North Carolina. He was still try- 
ing to keep on good terms with the Episcopal clergy, 
and Mr. Jarratt, Dr. McGaw,and Mr. Petti grew were 
his special friends. But his hope that by making 



68 Francis As bur y. 

concessions he might secure something of the same 
nature from the Established Church seems to have 
been a baseless one. After the Conference he went 
as usual to the western border, preaching in Shep- 
herdstown and Winchester, and during the hot 
weather of early August went into Pennsylvania. 
Here he heard of the sad death of Isaac Rollins, 
whom he had ten years before introduced into the 
ministry which Rollins had so shamefully dis- 
graced. There is perhaps no comfort to us in these 
latter days in finding out that the early preachers 
were not all saints, and learning that of the four 
earliest American preachers Abram Whitworth and 
Isaac Rollins became apostates, and, alas! that the 
gifted and zealous Joseph Cromwell, having done 
most excellent work, fell into grievous drunkenness 
and died and made no sign. The demands which 
Asbury made upon those who were associated with 
him were perhaps sometimes too great for weak men, 
and perhaps he was sometimes mistaken in the mor- 
al stamina of those whose zeal was so ardent. He 
visited Philadelphia, where after the war all things 
were prosperous but religion, and came again to 
New York. He had persuaded John Dickins to leave 
North Carolina, and take charge of the church in 
New York, which came out of the Revolution even 
stronger than when it went into it. He now vis- 
ited him, and preached earnestly to the people, and 
went again into the eastern shore of Maryland, and 
into Virginia and along the old route he had trav- 
eled the year before and traveled so often after- 
wards. He went into North Carolina, where he re- 
ceived the Lord's Supper from Mr. Pettigrew, and 



Francis As bury. 69 

received a letter from Mr. Wesley appointing kim 
to a work he had been doing for four years. Again 
he pressed through the middle counties of North Car- 
olina, and was sadly disappointed because he could 
not reach the Yadkin Circuit once more; but an in- 
flamed foot kept him from it, and it was by the aid 
of a stick that he could limp to the barn and the sta- 
ble. The Tar River Circuit, in Granville and War- 
ren, was very populous and was then in a prosperous 
state. He found the people numerous; the congre- 
gations in all the southern section of Virginia and 
the northern counties of North Carolina largely at- 
tended. He attended the two Conferences, one at 
Ellis's and one at Baltimore, and found that poor, 
half - crazy William Glendenning was beginning a 
fight against him, which he kept up for years. 

The Conference of 1784 over, he turned his face 
again toward the newly-settled Valley of Virginia 
and the borders of northwestern Virginia, where 
he says they w 7 ere three thick on the floor. He went 
into western Pennsylvania, and in July was in Phil- 
adelphia. He went as far north as New York, and 
met his old friend William Lupton. This portly 
merchant, who had given him some trouble, was 
still alive, and despite the war the society was still 
prosperous. He was in New York in August, and 
possibly learned something of what was designed 
in England by Mr. Wesley, but got only an inkling. 
He came southward, preaching as,he came, and after 
passing through the eastern shore of Virginia he 
made a circuit and reached Barratt's Chapel in 
Maryland, wmere he met Dr. Coke, in November, 
1784; and his next tour was as Bishop Asbury. 



70 Francis Asbuby. 

Stevens gives a letter from him to Shadford which 
throws some light on these times:* 

"Long has been thy absence/' he says, "and many, 
many have been my thoughts about thee, and my tri- 
als and consolations in loving and gaining friends. 
We have about fourteen thousand members, and be- 
tween seventy and eighty traveling preachers, and 
between thirty and forty circuits. Four clergymen 
have behaved themselves friendly in attending quar- 
terly meetings, and recommending us by word and 
letter. They are Mr. Jarratt in Virginia, as you 
know; Mr. Pettigrew, North Carolina; Dr. McGaw, 
Philadelphia; and Mr. Ogden, of East Jersey. You 
have heard of the divisions about that improper 
question proposed at Deer Creek Conference: 'What 
shall be done about the ordinances?' You know we 
stood foot by foot to oppose it. I cannot tell y r ou 
what I suffered in this affair. However, God has 
brought good out of evil, and it has so cured them 
that I think there will never be anything formidable 
in that way again. I hope if any preachers are to 
come over here at any future day, you will be one.. 
I admire the simplicity of our preachers. I do not 
think there has appeared another such company of 
young, devoted men. The gospel has taken a uni- 
versal spread. You have heard what great things 
God has done in the Peninsula since about these 
eighteen months that I thought it most prudent to 
stay in Delaware, and an exceeding great work we 
have had there, and on the eastern shore of Mary- 
land, so that my labors were not in vain. Since 1 
have been ranging through Virginia toward the Al- 
* Stevens's History of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



Francis As bury. 71 

leghany and Maryland, Pennsylvania and East and 
^Yest Jerseys and the Peninsula, I enjoy more health 
than I have for twenty years back. I travel four 
thousand miles in a year, all weathers, among rich 
and poor, Dutch and English. O, my dear Shad- 
ford, it would take a month to write out and speak 
what I want you to know\ The most momentous 
is my constant communion with God as my God." 

He wrote to Wesley near the same time, and said 
of North Carolina: "The present preachers suffer 
much, being often obliged to dwell in dirty cabins, 
to sleep in poor beds. My soul is daily fed, and I 
have abundant sweetness in God. I see the neces- 
sity of preaching a full and present salvation from 
all sin." 



\ 



CHAPTER X. 

1784. 

Dr. Coke — Mr. Wesley's Will — Mr. Asbury Refuses to be Or- 
dained Till a Conference is Called — The Conference Meets — 
Mr. Asbury and Dr. Coke Elected Bishops and Called Super- 
intendents. 

WHEN Mr. Asbury rode up to Barratt's Chapel 
on Sunday morning, November 14, 1784, he 
found in this chapel in the forest a great crowd of 
people assembled. When he entered the church he 
saw in the pulpit a clergyman in his gown. He was 
a small man with feminine features, long hair, and 
a hooked nose. He had never seen him before, 
but he knew he was Thomas Coke ; LL.D., Mr. Wes- 
ley's favorite lieutenant. The thin-visaged Thomas 
Vasey and the doctor he had not known, but the se- 
rene-looking Whatcoat, who was with them, he had 
known before in England. Dr. Coke came from the 
pulpit as the sunburned, sturdy traveler came in 
whom he rightly conjectured to be the man he had 
come to find, and embraced him warmly. The serv- 
ice was concluded with the communion, and to 
Mr. Asbury's astonishment his old friend What- 
coat assisted the clergyman in handing around 
the elements. Mr. Asbury was not taken entire- 
ly by surprise, and the meeting was not acciden- 
tal. When he was in New York a short time be- 
fore he had learned from John Dickins something of 
what was designed; but now in an interview with 
(72) 



Francis As bury. 73 

Dr. Coke the whole plan of Mr. Wesley was opened 
before him. 

I have with design confined myself as closely as 
I could to my office as Mr. Asbury's biographer, and 
have not allowed the temptation to turn to other 
closely connected subjects to influence me; and I 
shall not do so now, but will leave to those wiio write 
the histories of Methodism, or who feel it incumbent 
on them to defend Mr. Wesley's position, and to put 
his theory of Church government in its true place, 
to do so. I am simply to give Mr. Asbury's part in 
the transaction. When they had now gone to the 
home of their host, Dr. Coke laid before Mr. Asbury 
the matter in hand. The facts brought out seem 
to be that Mr. Wesley had decided that he had a 
right to ordain not only deacons and elders, but su- 
perintendents or bishops for his societies; that he 
had selected Dr. Coke to be one of the superintend- 
ents of the American societies, and ordained him to 
the office; that he had selected Francis Asbury to be 
joint superintendent with Dr. Coke, and Dr. Coke had 
been commissioned to ordain him deacon, elder, and 
superintendent; and that he had sent Richard What- 
coat and Thomas Vasey to act as elders and subordi- 
nate assistants to Mr. Asbury. 

The doctor said he was now ready to go forward 
and carry out Mr. Wesley's orders, and he presented 
to Mr. Asbury Mr. Wesley's letter, with which letter 
all the students of Methodist history are familiar. 
Mr. Wesley gives in it the reason why he exercised 
a right which he believed was legitimately his, and 
why he did in America what he had not done in 
England. 



74 Francis Asbuey. 

In Dr. Tigert's Constitutional History of Ameri- 
can Episcopal Methodism, in Stevens's History of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Bangs, in Mc- 
Tyeire, the whole story of this affair is given, and 
there is an able defense of the propriety of Mr. Wes- 
ley's course, but with that we have little to do in this 
biography. 

Mr. Asbury says when he heard why they had come 
to America he was shocked; and well he might have 
been, for a greater change of position was rarely 
demanded of anyone than that he was required to 
make. I think it is certain that the Church of En- 
gland did not have in it a more loyal member than 
Mr. Asbury was. He was an Episcopalian of the 
Wesleyan type, and not Charles Wesley himself was 
more attached to the Establishment than he was. 
With sacramentarianism, or high-churchism, he had 
no sympathy, but he loved the Church of Burnet 
and Tillotson. He had no liking for Presbyterians 
or Congregationalists. He believed there were three 
orders — bishops, elders, and deacons; and while he 
was as evangelical in his theology as Bunyan or 
Flavel, he was, as far as his views of Church govern- 
ment were concerned, thoroughly an Episcopalian. 
When his young brethren in Virginia had broken 
away from the old traditions and were determined 
to exercise the right to administer the sacraments, 
almost single-handed he had withstood them and 
won the field; and now he was startled by a propo- 
sition that he who would not even administer the 
sacrament of baptism, because he was not ordained 
by a bishop, should consent to take ordination as a 
bishop. He was not at all misled by the use of what 



Francis As bury. 75 

seemed to be the less offensive term of superintend- 
ent, instead of bishop. He knew well that he was 
to do in America all that a bishop did in England; 
and while he might not have the name, he certainly 
was to have the office, of a bishop. 

Mr. Asbury had now the whole plan laid before 
him. A Church was to be organized, orders were to 
be given, sacraments were to be administered, a lit- 
urgy was to be used, and articles of faith were to be 
accepted. It was only necessary for him to say aye, 
and Dr. Coke would lay his hands upon him. Rich- 
ard Whatcoat and Thomas Yasey would remain 
with him as elders, and he would continue to do the 
work he had been doing, and add to it the office of 
ordaining. Bat lie did not say aye. He was willing 
to do all asked of him, provided his brethren said so, 
and nothing unless they did say so; and more than 
this, with his consent Dr. Coke could not exercise 
his Wesley-conf erred function unless they said so, 
and a Conference must be called. 

Mr. Wesley had not designed this. He was not 
accustomed to consult his helpers They were to 
keep his rules, not to mend them ; but there was no 
time to consult Mr. Wesley, and Dr. Coke yielded, 
and that saintly young man, Freeborn Garrettson. 
who had done such wonderful work in Delaware, 
was sent like an arrow from a bow through Virginia 
to call the preachers to meet in Baltimore on Christ- 
mas day for consultation. 

Mr. Asbury gave up his traveling companion, 
Black Harry, to Dr. Coke; and while Dr. Coke went 
one way he went another, and a week before the 
time for the preachers to report he and Dr. Coke 



76 Francis As bury. 

and sundry others met at Perry Hall. Here there 
was a free consultation, and on Friday, the 24th day 
of December, the preachers who could be gathered 
together met in Lovely Lane meetinghouse in Bal- 
timore, in which the good stewards had had backs 
put to the benches and placed a stove. The Con- 
ference was tenacious of its rights, but not unwilling 
to regard, as far as possible, all Mr. Wesley's wishes. 
They were not willing to accept bishops or liturgies 
or declarations of faith at his dictation, but were 
willing to adopt his suggestions; and so they settled 
all things as he wished by a majority vote, and unan- 
imously elected Mr. Asbury and Dr. Coke to the su- 
perintendency, accepted the service-book provided, 
and did sundry other things at Dr. Coke's suggestion. 
William Philip Otterbein,of whom we have had men- 
tion, a German-Reformed preacher, joined with Dr. 
Coke, Mr. Whatcoat, and Mr. Vasey, and Francis As- 
bury was set apart first as deacon, then as elder, and 
then as superintendent, and for two years was Mr. Su- 
perintendent Asbury. For two years he was known 
by the people as Bishop Asbury, and appeared in the 
minutes as superintendent; and then the silly trib- 
ute to high-church prejudice was paid no longer, 
and Superintendent Asbury became Bishop Asbury 
in name as he was in fact. 

Note. — It has been impossible to verify all the statements 
made in this important chapter by referring to the section of 
the journal, page and paragraph ; bnt the facts as T have given 
them are so presented at length in the journal of 1784, which 
can be consulted. 



CHAPTER XI. 

1784. 
Mr. Asbury's Views on Episcopacy. 

THIS is perhaps the proper place to give Mr. 
Asbury's views concerning the episcopal office 
with which he had been invested. In this chap- 
ter I shall aim rather to state his views than to de- 
fend them, and in doing this I shall make no effort 
to fit them into any theory of Church government 
whatsoever. 

Mr. Wesley said a bishop and an elder were the 
same order. So said Dr. Coke, but Mr. Asbury held 
to the three orders as decidedly as the judicious 
Hooker. He writes explicitly on this subject in his 
journal after he had been a bishop for some years. 
In April, 1801, he writes: "I recollect having read 
some years since Ostervald's Christian Theology, and 
wishing to transcribe a few sentences, I met w 7 ith 
it and extracted from Chapter II., page 317, what 
follows: 'Yet it cannot be denied that in the prim- 
itive Church there w r as always a president who pre- 
sided over others who were in a state of equality 
with himself. This is clearly proved by the cata- 
logue of bishops to be found in Eusebius and others. 
In them we may see the names of the bishops be- 
longing to the principal Churches, many of whom 
were ordained while the apostles, especially John, 
were still living.' So far Mr. Ostervald was, I pre- 
sume, a Presbyterian. In Cave's Life of the Fa- 

(77) 



78 Francis Asbury. 

thers ahd in the writings of the ancients it will ap- 
pear that the churches of Alexandria and elsewhere 
had large congregations of many elders, that the 
apostles might appoint or ordain bishops. Mr. Os- 
tervald, who it appears is a candid and well-in- 
formed man, has gone as far as could be expected 
from a Presbyterian. For myself I see but a hair's 
breadth difference between the sentiments of the 
learned author of the Christian Theology and the 
practice of the Methodist Episcopal Church. There 
is not, nor indeed to my mind can there be, a perfect 
equality between a constant president and those 
over whom he always presides." 

Bishop Asbury does not here enter into any dis- 
cussion as to the manner in which bishops are made, 
but concerns himself with the position they occupy. 
The question which interested him was not how 
came he a bishop, but, as he was one, what were his 
prerogatives; but a little later he says: "I will tell 
the world what I rest my authority on : First, divine 
authority; second, seniority in America; third, the 
election of the General Conference; fourth, my ordi- 
nation by Thomas Coke, William Philip Otterbein 
(German Presbyterian minister), Richard Whatcoat, 
and Thomas Vasey ; fifth, because the signs of an 
apostle have been seen in me." He was no lord over 
the heritage. He was not self-appointed, nor did 
he, as he once had done, exercise rule because Mr. 
Wesley had chosen him to do so. He was the serv- 
ant of his brethren, but the office they conferred on 
him required him to command, and the authority 
they gave him was almost absolute, limited only by 
the conscience of the chosen commander. No pope 



Francis As bury. 79 

ever claimed a more unlimited power than Bishop 
Asbury claimed, but it was conferred for public 
good, and could have been withheld. As the black 
pope, the head of the Jesuits, has but to speak and 
he is obeyed, so Asbury expected those who had 
made him commanding general to heed his orders. 
He claimed no superiority save that which was of 
office, and an office given, and he would gladly have 
resigned it at any time if it had been possible. While 
he was bishop he realized the responsibility of his 
position and tried to meet it. The Asburyan episco- 
pacy, as it is sometimes called, is more fully set 
forth in his letter to Bishop McKendree, written at 
a late period of his life, but is substantially the one 
I have given. The letter is too long to be inserted 
here. It was dictated to Thomas Mason, and was 
written in 1813. It is somewhat rambling and in- 
coherent, and evidences the decay of his mental pow- 
ers. The reader can find it in full in Paine's Life of 
McKendree, Vol. I., p. 310. It is made up largely of 
extracts from Haweis's Church History. In it he 
states the position which he held. There were three 
orders — the bishop, the elder, the deacon. The bish- 
op was the successor of the apostles. The apostolic 
order of things, which was that of a traveling super- 
intendence, was lost in the first century. Mr. Wes- 
ley ordained Dr. Coke, and Dr. Coke ordained him. 
Mr. Wesley was ordained by two bishops, deacon 
and elder, and had an apostolic right to ordain also. 
The apostolic order was lost in fifty years after the 
death of the apostles, and we must restore it. The 
regular order of succession was in John Wesley, 
Thomas Coke, Francis Asbury, Richard Whatcont, 



80 Francis Asbury. 

and William McKendree. It is needless to follow 
this rambling letter to its close. He believed that 
he was a legitimate successor of the apostles, and 
his utterances rather indicate that he thought the 
Methodist bishop alone was that successor. But he 
held as decidedly to the opinion that he was only 
a bishop or superintendent of his brethren, because 
they, by their selection of him, conferred that office 
on him. These are his views. 

While he felt as fully as any pope ever did that he 
was called of God to the office of bishop, he recog- 
nized the fact that he had been placed in this posi- 
tion by the suffrages of his brethren. "For myself," 
he says, "I pity those who cannot distinguish be- 
tween a pope of Rome and an old worn man of sixty 
years who has the power given him of riding five 
thousand miles a year, at a salary of eighty dollars, 
through summer's heat and winter's cold; traveling 
in all weathers, preaching in all places; his best 
covering from rain often but a blanket; the surest 
sharpener of his wit hunger, from fasts voluntas 
and involuntary; his best fare for six months of the 
twelve coarse kindness; and his reward from too 
many suspicion, envy, and murmurings all around. 
He says he felt the great responsibility of his office, 
and would have been glad to have surrendered it if 
he could have done so. He was always very sensi- 
tive, and the intimation that he was partial to men 
and sections in the discharge of his office gave him 
great pain. The careful itinerary his journal gives 
shows how he labored to meet the demand for the 
oversight of every section of the land. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Thomas Coke — The Welsh Gentleman — In Oxford — Coke's Cu- 
racy — His Conversion — Mr. Wesley's Favor — His Labors — 
His Death. 

THE President of the Christmas Conference 
of 1784 was Thomas Coke, LL.D. He was 
a Welshman by birth, and was born thirty-seven 
years before this time, the only child of a family of 
wealth and position in the province from which he 
came. He began his university studies in Oxford 
in his seventeenth year. John Wesley had founded 
his first Methodist society in London, ten years be- 
fore Coke's birth, and Methodism was a strong and 
healthy plant when he entered on his Oxford life. 
He was a handsome boy, and, living in ease and 
affluence, he became very frivolous and fond of 
the ordinary amusements of those days, especially 
of dancing. Oxford was the university to which 
wealthy and titled Tories sent their sons; and the 
pure though irreligious young Welshman found him- 
self in a hotbed of vice and, of course, of infidelity. 
He soon became infected with the virus of unbelief, 
and, boy as he was, gave up the faith. Although he 
was the boon companion of the dissipated, he did 
not fall into their grosser vices; and while he in- 
dulged in wine, he never ran into great excess, and 
though fond of cards, he did not game deeply. He 
was very unhappy in the midst of this gayety. At 
this time he was visited bv a clergvman from his 
6 (81) 



82 Francis As bury. 

native province. He heard him preach, and was 
impressed. When he spoke to the clergyman of his 
sermon, however, he was shocked to hear from his 
lips an avowal of entire disbelief in the Christianity 
he was defending. This course so disgusted the 
high-toned young Welshman that he began to ex- 
amine the evidences of the Christian religion, and so 
became theoretically a Christian. In studying the 
subject of regeneration he became satisfied that he 
had not received the new nature. He resolved to 
seek it, and in the meantime gave himself with great 
assiduity to his studies, and improved rapidly. He 
left Oxford before he was twenty-one, and was soon 
elevated to an important position in his borough. 
He resolved to enter into holy orders, and, naturally 
ambitious, he expected a high place. He took or- 
ders, and, seeking for the worldly rewards of his of- 
fice, he lost sight of his religious needs; after being 
disappointed in his expectations of rapid promo- 
tion, he took a curacy in the charming county of 
Somersetshire, in the center of England. Here he 
preached with great earnestness; and without com- 
punction, when he found a better sermon than his 
own, following Sir Koger's advice, he used the one 
he found; but now he became convicted under his 
own preaching, and began to preach with real ear- 
nestness the great necessity of the new birth. His 
church became crowded, and he built a gallery at 
his own expense. He was at once accused of being 
a Methodist, which was the one term of odium given 
to anyone who preached as he did. 

Thomas Maxfield, Mr. Wesley's first lay preacher, 
who left him in the great excitement on the subject 
of Perfection in London, in 1763, was now an or- 



Francis As bury. 83 

dained clergyman. He was not far from Dr. Coke, 
and he sought him out. His conversation aroused 
Coke still more, and that stirring book, Alleine's 
Alarm, fairly awakened him. He was yet unde- 
cided on the Calvinistic question, which w T as stirring 
the evangelical world. A clergyman handed him Mr. 
Fletcher's Checks. This settled his doubts on this 
question. An interview with a friendly clergyman 
among the dissenters brought him on his way; but 
he was led to clear and correct views by a pious rus- 
tic and a class leader. He had now found the way 
of life intellectually, and he began to preach as he 
had never done before, and work with an ardor 
which told how deeply he was in earnest for the 
souls of his people. A few days after the interview 
with the laborer, peace came to his soul. He told 
others of it. He laid aside his manuscript and 
preached with divine unction. Pew things give 
formalists of any name greater offense than pro- 
fessions of a deeper experience than they know, and 
few things were more unendurable in such a parish 
as the average one In England then was than re- 
ligion in the curate. They could tolerate a little 
gaming, a little too much wine, and all such minor 
matters; but for him to have religion, and to urge it 
upon others, was another thing, and was unpardon- 
able: and so Dr. Coke was dismissed from the curacy, 
and the bells rang him out of the parish. 

He was educated, wealthy, and not yet thirty 
years old, a stanch churchman and an earnest 
Christian; he heard that Mr. Wesley was to be in 
twenty miles of him, and he rode to meet him. Mr. 
Wesley was now an old man (seventy-four years old), 
and his heart warmed toward this brave young cler- 



84 Francis As bury. 

gyman. He invited him to meet the preachers at 
Bristol, and from this time to his death Thomas 
Coke was Mr. Wesley's bosom friend. His expul- 
sion from his parish took place after the Methodist 
societies had outlived their days of weakness and 
persecution; and when Dr. Coke appeared in Lon- 
don, crowds came to hear him. Following Mr. Wes- 
ley's example, he preached in the fields, and great 
success followed his ministry everywhere. 

Mr. Wesley had long needed an assistant in his 
episcopal work. His brother Charles had left him to 
bear the burden alone. Mr. Fletcher, who he had 
hoped would succeed him, was unwilling to take the 
position. Here Mr. Wesley thought was the man 
he had been seeking and praying for. So he re- 
ceived the zealous young doctor, and gave"~him the 
warmest affection and confidence; and so Coke en- 
tered into the connection. He came to America, as 
we have seen, and entered earnestly into the work 
before him. He found simple-hearted Francis As- 
bury trying to build up a high school for Methodist 
boys at Abingdon, Maryland. He decided at once 
on a college to be called Cokesbury, after himself 
and Asbury. The scheme was about as sensible as 
Whitefield's college in Savannah ; but at it he went 
with all zeal. He made all the plans; he set to work 
to raise the funds; raised enough to start the affair, 
and then left poor Asbury to do the rest, and went 
back to England. The rules of the school were 
drawn up by him, and were about as practicable as 
the constitution John Locke gave to the South Caro- 
lina colony, or the measures of James Oglethorpe in 
Georgia's early settlement. Happily and merciful- 
ly, the schoolhouse was burned down, and Cokes- 



Francis As bury. 85 

bury, Maryland, with its impracticable rules, passed 
away from the earth, much to Mr. Asbury's relief. 

Coke had been about a month in America when 
he began a crusade against slavery. The preachers 
were all agreed about the matter. It was an evil to 
be put down. Asbury had been doing his best to 
put it down, and so had the preachers; but now the 
little doctor was going to beard the lion in his den. 
He would have an act passed at Baltimore, and put 
it into effect on his first tour, which would extirpate 
the crying evil; and much good he did, to be sure. 
He was going to kill or to cure; but the preachers 
would not let him kill, and certain it is he did not 
cure. 

The good doctor was now a bishop, and had as 
sincere a desire to do the Church good service as ever 
man had. He had spoken out in no uncertain tones 
at Baltimore, and was imprudent enough to say 
things which, while they pleased the Methodists and 
the Republicans in America, were not at all pleas- 
ant to Church people and the Tories of England, sore 
enough over the loss of the colonies. He now began 
his tour through Virginia. The warm-hearted peo- 
ple received him as an angel ; but before he had been 
among them many weeks he made the fiercest as- 
sault against slavery, and aroused no small amount 
of displeasure. His biographer thinks that he was 
in danger of bodily harm, and just escaped — well, 
he escaped all bad treatment, and thus had better 
fare than he had in his English parish. But the 
Virginians were glad to see him go back to England. 
He was a brave, unselfish man, and like a hero 
faced the many dangers of the American traveler in 
fording and swimming streams, and sometimes made 



86 Francis As bury. 

very narrow escapes in this way. The Methodist 
preachers in England were in no very good humor 
with him; and even Mr. Wesley, who had a very 
dim vision when the faults of his favorites were to 
be searched for, received him very coldly on his re- 
turn to England, and his name was left off the min- 
utes for the year. He now began his great missiona- 
ry work by securing some missionaries for Nova Sco- 
tia. He took his collections for these missionaries, 
and even then opened a correspondence with refer- 
ence to a mission in Hindoostan ; and this desire then 
expressed, to reach India with the gospel, lingered 
with him to the last. This was four years before 
Carey. He now secured three missionaries for Nova 
Scotia, and set sail from England ; but there was nev- 
er smooth sailing for the good doctor, and there was 
a stormy voyage this time. When a fierce storm 
came on and continued, the superstitious sailors, 
somewhat angered already, were about to throw 
him overboard as a Jonah, and he barely escaped. 
At last they landed in the West Indies, instead of 
Nova Scotia. 

Methodism had been introduced into these islands 
by a slave owner, Mr. Nathaniel Gilbert, and Dr. 
Coke found some societies and a missionary already 
there. He did good work on the island on which 
he landed; and, leaving Mr. Hammett behind him, 
he took shipping for Charleston, in South Carolina. 
He did not receive a very cordial greeting from his 
American brethren, and when he reached Virginia 
again he found the people much exasperated at his 
plain dealing. He saw that he was doing neither 
slaves nor masters any good by his course, and he 
desisted from it. He could not be still nor remain 



Fbancis As bur y. 87 

in one place; so he returned to England and Ire- 
land. He swept over England; then preached in 
the Isle of Jersey; then came again to the West In- 
dies; and was the next year once more in Charles- 
ton. The second Conference in the state of Georgia, 
at that time the southern frontier of the United 
States, was to be held in Wilkes county. It was to 
be reached only on horseback; and so, leaving 
Charleston, he began his journey through the wil- 
derness; and, after over a hundred miles through 
pine woods and swamps, he reached the higher and 
better lands of South Carolina, where great crowds 
were gathered to hear a real bishop and a doctor 
of laws. He found a vigorous young Conference 
in Georgia; and, as usual, enterprising some great 
scheme, he set on foot the Wesley and Whitefield 
College of Georgia, which never became an institu- 
tion. Tobacco was the Georgia staple then, and 
twelve thousand five hundred pounds of tobacco, 
worth £500, was subscribed for the school. The 
doctor, now wise from experience, let social ques- 
tions alone. He remained in America this time 
nearly six months, and then he crossed the sea again. 
He was nominally a bishop of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church in America, but he was really the mis- 
sionary bishop of all Methodism. This restless, de- 
voted, heroic man felt that there was no man for 
whom Christ had not died, and no man Christ could 
not save. Mr. Wesley said that the world was his 
parish, yet England and Ireland gave him all he 
could do ; but Dr. Coke found the British empire too 
small a field for his enterprise. So, after a few 
months in England, he returned again to America. 
As a bishop he was not a very pleasant man to an 



88 Francis As bury. 

American Conference. He had his views, and did 
not expect others, especially the backwoods preach- 
ers of America, to have theirs; and as he did but lit- 
tle of the work in America, they insisted on holding 
their way and holding their opinions. While really 
valuing the good doctor, thej^ refused to be ruled by 
him ; and at last they told him that he anight stay in 
England if it suited him best. 

Mr. Wesley died while Coke was in America, and 
he hurried back to England. The Wesleyan preach- 
ers there never felt very cordially toward him. They 
thought his aim in returning was perhaps to take 
Mr. Wesley's place. This is very doubtful; but if 
he did, little he made of it. 

Not satisfied with his great work in supervising 
missions and being Bishop of America, the good 
doctor now prepared a commentary. He did not 
take time to make it short, and drew largely upon 
Dr. Dodd's work. The Conference refused to print 
the folios, but he published it on his own account. 
After spending some fifty thousand dollars on it, 
and having a world of trouble out of it, he sold out 
to the Conference on a long time for fifteen thousand 
dollars, and retired from book printing. He was 
rich, he married rich, and gave away all he had. He 
enterprised a mission in Africa, which failed; and 
at last, at his own expense, fitted out a mission to 
Ceylon. On his way there he died. They buried 
him in the sea, and its waves never sung their requi- 
em over a nobler soul. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1785. 

The New Bishop — Tour Southward — Henry Willis — Jesse Lee 
— Visits Charleston, S. C. — Edgar Wells — Journey North- 
ward — Cokesbury College — Visit to Mount Vernon — Corner 
Stone of College Laid. 

T17*HEN the Conference of 1784 ended, Bishop 
VV Asbury at once began his journey to the 
south. He rode through central Virginia, where he 
found Henry Willis, who had not attended the 
Christmas Conference. He ordained him a deacon 
and an elder, and took him with him on his journey. 
In two weeks he was in central North Carolina, and 
mentions as stopping places Thompson's, Short's, 
Fisher's River, Witherspoon's, Elsbury, and Salis- 
bury. Here at Salisbury he met Jesse Lee, who had 
not been at the Christmas Conference. The new 
bishop preached at Salisbury, and used the liturgy 
and wore the gown and bands. Jesse Lee had had 
enough of liturgies and gowns in his Virginia bring- 
ing up, and he gave the new bishop his mind on this 
subject, and as far as we know the gown and bands 
vanished forever, to the gratification of American 
Methodists. Jesse Lee was to go with the bishop 
to Charleston, and the big-bodied, big-brained, big- 
hearted Virginian was just the companion the some- 
what gloomy bishop needed, and he says that he was 
greatly comforted by brother Lee's company. As- 
bury, Willis, and Lee made their way to Georgetown, 
where William Wavne, nephew of Mad Anthony 

(89) 



90 Francis Asbury. 

Wayne, received them into his home and heartily 
entertained them. They rode into Charleston a few 
days afterwards, but not to find themselves entirely 
among strangers. A Mr. Edgar Wells, who was a 
merchant there, to whom Mr. Willis was commend- 
ed by Mr. Wayne, now welcomed the three evan- 
gelists to his home, and entertained them while 
there. They found themselves in the largest city 
south of Philadelphia. There were of Christian de- 
nominations: "The Church" people, who had two 
churches, St. Michael's and St. Philip's; the Inde- 
pendents, the Huguenots, the Baptists, one each. 
In the lower part of the city, near the bay, there was 
an old Baptist church, which had been perhaps one 
of the first churches built in the city, and being aban- 
doned by the Baptists, it was secured by Mr. Wells 
as a preaching place. Charleston was now nearly 
one hundred years old. Peculiar advantages of 
location made it a most important city. The back 
country for hundreds of miles sent its products here 
for sale, and the people bought here their supplies. 
There was a large number of slaves on the Sea 
Islands and rice plantations near by. These ne- 
groes do not seem to have had any special attention 
religiously till Asbury began his work among them. 
Among the white population there was much lax- 
ity of morals and much formality in religion. It 
evinced the daring character of Asbury's ministry 
that he should have fastened his eye on Charleston 
with a determination to establish Methodism there, 
and while its success in this city has not been re- 
markable as compared to some other places, it has 
been won over perhaps greater difficulties than in 



Francis As bury. 91 

any other city on the eastern coast. The new bish- 
op preached every day for a week. Jesse Lee re- 
mained with him and helped him both by preaching 
and singing for a few days. The strangers attract- 
ed a considerable amount of attention, and at least 
one person was converted, and he was worth the 
journey. It w r as their host, Mr. Edgar Wells. A 
society w T as formed and Methodism was established 
in Charleston. After laying the foundation for the 
future, he left Charleston and made his way along 
the eastern border of South Carolina to Wilming- 
ton, in North Carolina. It was a somewhat impor- 
tant commercial town, and Asbury says: "We went 
to , but he was not prepared to receive us; after- 
wards to , where w T e had a crowd of merry, sing- 
ing, drunken raftsmen. To this merriment I soon 
put a stop. T felt the power of the devil here. The 
bell went round to give notice of preaching, and I 
preached to a large congregation. When I had 
done, behold F. Hill came into the room powdered 
off, with a number of ladies and gentlemen. As I 
could not get my horse and bags, I heard him out. I 
verily believe his sermon was his own, it was so much 
like his conversation.' 1 He does not say who F. Hill 
was, nor w T here he had met him before, but he w r as 
probably a relative of Green Hill. He rode to meet 
the Conference at Green Hill's. 

We cannot get a very satisfactory view T of this 
Conference. We know it met at Green Hill's, in 
eastern North Carolina, and that he entertained the 
entire body. He was a large slaveholder, a wealthy 
planter, and a local Methodist preacher. Dr. Coke 
was with Asbury, and Asbury simply remarks: 
"Here we held our Conference in great peace." Who 



92 Francis AsbubY. 

were present we do not know, but at this Conference 
new work was laid out. The saintly John Tunnell 
was sent to Charleston. The distant settlements on 
the Holston and on the Yadkin, as well as the thick- 
ly-settled counties of Halifax, Rowan, Caswell, and 
Guilford, and the New River, Tar River, and Roan- 
oke River settlements, were provided with preach- 
ers. At this Conference we find the first mention 
of presiding elders. Richard Ivey, Reuben Ellis, 
and Henry Willis were made "president elders," as 
Bishop Asbury called them. Asbury had a milita- 
ry mind, and his organization of forces was com- 
plete. The bishop first, then the elder, the preacher 
in charge, the junior preacher, the local preacher, 
the class leader; there was supervision from the top 
to the bottom. The selection of certain men as sub- 
bishops, which was begun now, was not done with- 
out a certain amount of opposition. 

This Conference w 7 as merely the assembling of a 
few preachers, called together by the bishop, at a 
place chosen by him for the convenience of the 
preachers. The Conference, as it was called, met 
now in sections, but no section was authorized to do 
anything of a general nature until the other sections 
were consulted and had agreed to it. Dr. Coke was 
with him at this Conference, and he and Asbury be- 
gan their journey together to Baltimore, but parted 
company, and Asbury rode through eastern Vir- 
ginia. On the way he passed through Yorktown. He 
says the inhabitants were dissolute and careless, but 
he preached to a few serious women at one o'clock, 
and by request to the ladies again at four. He 
crossed the York and Rappahannock rivers and went 
into the Northern Neck. ' The first settlements of a 



F MAN CIS AS BURY. 93 

new country are naturally along the water ways, 
and when land is cheap and easily secured it is nat- 
ural that large bodies should be taken up by the first 
settlers and large fortunes should be the result; 
and thus it was in this tide-water country. The 
country between the Rappahannock and the Poto- 
mac was very fertile, and for over a hundred years 
had been settled by Englishmen. Those who lived 
in it were among the wealthiest and most aristocrat- 
ic in Virginia. From these people came the Lees, 
the Washingtons, the Masons, and others who have 
been distinguished in the councils of Virginia. 
Across the Potomac from there was the western 
shore of Maryland, where the first Catholic settle- 
ments had been made. Asbury says at Hoe's Ferry 
he found the people wretchedly wicked. He paid a 
dollar for ferriage, and left them and rode to Alex- 
andria. Here he joined Dr. Coke, and together they 
called on General Washington at his home at Mount 
Vernon, and asked him to sign a petition to the as- 
sembly of Virginia, which they were circulating, for 
the immediate abolition of slavery. The general 
received them very courteously, invited them to dine 
with him, and gave them his views about slavery, 
and then refused to sign their petition. They took 
their departure that afternoon, and, as far as I can 
find any record, that was the first and last and only 
time Bishop Asbury was ever in Mount Vernon, Dr. 
Strickland to the contrary notwithstanding. 

When Mr. Asbury met John Dickins in North Car- 
olina, at Dickins's suggestion he resolved to attempt 
a school like the Kingswood School in England, 
which he felt was much needed; but when Dr. Coke 
Came and heard of the plan., he was taken with the 



94 Francis Asbury. 

idea of a college — a real Methodist college, the first 
in the world. The history of this ill-fated Cokes- 
bury College belongs largely to annals of the Meth- 
odist historian; suffice it to say that after Dr. Coke, 
who knew all about colleges, had made his plans on 
a sufficiently extensive scale, he went back to En- 
gland to meet his astonished and indignant brethren 
of the connection there, and left poor Asbury to bear 
the burden of carrying them out. Asbury was not 
well, but he rode up to Abingdon and preached the 
foundation sermon of Cokesbury College. The only 
biographer of Asbury, Strickland, evidently draws 
upon his fancy for a picture which Stevens repro- 
duces in his history. If there is any proof that As- 
bury was attired in a long gown, with flowing bands, 
I have not been able to find it. The incident is like 
some of the other things, related by his biographer, 
given more to add picturesqueness to a somewhat 
prosy story than because it was a fact known to be 
true. We would fain hope that after the vestments 
disappeared at Salisbury they never came forth 
again. What the home of Ebenezer Blackwell was 
to Wesley, so was the home of Gough to Asbury. 
He always turned his footsteps thitherward after 
his long journeys, and paused longer here in his 
ceaseless travel than he did anywhere else. He 
rested less than a week, however, and then went into 
a German settlement in Maryland, near Sharpsburg. 
He rode by his favorite watering place, Rath, in 
Berkley, up the south branch of the Potomac, and 
after a dreary ride came to Morgantown, Virginia, 
and returned to the springs, where he spent nearly a 
week nursing his sick throat. 

Then through the broiling sun in August he came 



Francis As bury. 95 

to Baltimore, where he had an attack of fever which 
kept him two weeks in bed at Perry Hall. While 
he was sick here his dear friend Mrs. Chamier died. 
From Asbury's account of the attendance at her fu- 
neral service, and other allusions to her, she seems 
to have been a gentlewoman of deep piety. He was 
able to creep from his sick bed, and performed the 
funeral rites and preached to about a thousand peo- 
ple, and two days afterwards set off to Philadelphia. 
He made a flying trip to Xew York, where his old 
friends supplied his needs, and then started south- 
ward again. He bought a light jersey wagon in 
New Jersey, but after trying to use it a few T weeks 
he went back to his sulky again, and continued his 
journey southward. 



CHAPTEE XIV, 

1786. 

Ashury's Second Episcopal Tour — Hanover, Virginia — North 
Carolina — Sinclair Capers — Charleston — Hope Hull — John 
Dickins and the Eevised Discipline — Central North Carolina 
— The Baltimore Conference — The Valley of Virginia— Re- 
ligious Experience at Bath — Return Southward. 

IN Virginia, on his way, Asbury's throat became in- 
flamed, and he had to lie by at the widow Cham- 
berlayne's, in Hanover county. She was very kind, 
and being a somewhat skillful leech, and withal a 
motherly woman, she put him on his feet again in a 
short time. He had a rheumatic affection of one of 
his feet, and was led to reflect upon the dark provi- 
dence. To those who read the story of his exposure 
and toils, his long fasts and exhausting labors, the 
providence which called a halt by a severe twinge of 
pain does not seem so dark. 

He went now into North Carolina. He was on 
the eastern shore, riding parallel with the coast. 
The rains had been very heavy, and the whole coun- 
try was under water, but they floundered on. He 
says they toiled over swampy routes and crazy 
bridges until they arrived at New Berne, then the 
capital of North Carolina, where the assembly was 
in session. He sailed down to Beaufort, where the 
people were very kind, but had little religion. The 
journey overland was largely through a dreary 
waste until they reached Georgetown. Here the 
(96) 



Francis Asbury. 97 

faithful Willis met them, and these were cheered to 
see on the way the frame for a preaching house go- 
ing up. On this journey he stopped at the home of 
S. Gapers. This was Sinclair Capers, the uncle of 
William Capers. He w r as a well-to-do rice-planter, 
converted under the ministry of Henry Willis, and 
w T as one of Asbury's earliest and warmest friends. 

On the 13th of January he came again into 
Charleston, where he rested a few 7 days, then turned 
his face to the northwest, and went with labor, but 
without anything of special interest, into North Car 
olina. At Salisbury he met the preachers and spent 
three days in the Conference. One of these, Hope 
Hull, he speaks of as "a smooth-tongued, pretty 
speaker, that promises fair for future usefulness." 
The promise was not belied, for he was in after time 
a power for good. We shall see him often as As- 
bury's cherished helper, whether in the itinerant or 
local ranks. He was from the eastern shore of Mary- 
land, and had spent his last years in Georgia, where 
he was a leading man in Church and State. The 
bishop rode through the central parts of North Car- 
olina, and was not at all pleased with the state of af- 
fairs. In Hillsboro he found things so discouraging 
that he resolved to come no more till they were bet- 
tered. John Dickins, who was now 7 married, and 
had returned from New York to North Carolina, 
had been aiding Asbury in getting the Discipline 
ready for the press. Dickins, who had been at Eton, 
was at that time the most scholarly man in the 
connection. He had been so opposed to Asbury's 
course, when he resisted the preachers who w r orked 
to separate the societies from the Established 
Church, that he desisted from traveling, and it was 
7 



98 Francis As bub y. 

evident from his course then that the sturdy En- 
glishman had little use for the English establish- 
ment, and little disposition to keep on good terms 
with it; and it is probable that the change of the 
name of Asbury's office in the Discipline from su- 
perintendent to bishop was at his instance. He had 
good literary taste, and was the first book agent in 
the connection. The country along Asbury's route, 
although perhaps the oldest part of central North 
Carolina, was by no means prosperous, and it was 
somewhat difficult to get good food or tolerable 
lodgings, and the religious condition of things was 
not flourishing; but when he crossed over into Vir- 
ginia he found things in a very lively state. The 
Conference was held at Lane's, and there were some 
spirits which were tried, he said, before it ended. 
There were, however, ten new probationers added 
to the preaching force. His journals, never full, are 
exceedingly barren here, and we know 7 but little of 
what occurred. He went on northward, and at Al- 
exandria, where he preached in the courthouse, he 
drew a plan and set on foot a subscription for a 
meetinghouse. 

The Baltimore Conference was to be held at Ab- 
ingdon, Maryland, where the new college was lo- 
cated. He found it now only ready for the roof, but 
a debt of nine hundred dollars hung over it. It was 
never free from debt, and he was never free from 
worry as long as it stood. Money was scarce, and 
yet he must beg. The good brethren in Baltimore 
had built a new meetinghouse, and on Light street 
the congregation, which had worshiped in Lovely 
Lane, a few blocks away, were now in better quar- 
ters. Asbury preached for them twice on Sunday, 



Francis As bury. 99 

and Whatcoat held a watch-night with them on 
Tuesday night. 

In the west of Maryland there was a large settle- 
ment of Germans^ and he preached at Antietam, 
where, nearly a century afterwards, the Confederate 
and Federal armies met in hostile combat. He then 
crossed the Potomac, and entered into the northern 
part of the Valley of Virginia. He preached in a 
grove in Winchester, and went on to Xewtown, 
where he met Otterbein, with whom he consulted 
about the formation of the Church of the United 
Brethren. Asbury was lame and weary, and the 
country was new and rough. The section of west- 
ern Maryland and west Virginia and Pennsylvania 
was then being peopled by new settlers, and Asbury 
was always with the advanced guard. He rode out 
to Coxe's fort on the Ohio River and then into the 
lower counties of Pennsylvania. He had ridden one 
hundred and fifty miles on as bad roads as any he 
had seen on the continent. He had now reached 
the point from w T hich he started southward on his 
first tour, and in July he went to the waters at Bath, 
in Berkley, and as he had no appointment for three 
weeks he resolved to spend the time recruiting in 
Bath; but he was not willing to be idle, and he 
preached every other night and spent his days of 
solitude in much prayer. 

Several times in his life he hoped that wondrous 
change for which he had sought and prayed, when 
all sinful tendencies would be destroyed, had come; 
but then he doubted and gave up his confidence 
and sought again, and now he says: "A pleasing 
thought passed through my mind; it was this: that 
[ was saved »from the remains of sin." He now r 



100 Francis As bury. 

went northward, and worn and weary he reached 
New York. He was sick, and for eight days was in 
bed, but as soon as he was able to travel he started 
for the south, and made his usual tour through the 
eastern shore, and then came again to the trouble- 
some college. It had now cost ten thousand dollars, 
and was ready for a president. Mr. Wesley had rec- 
ommended a Mr. Heath, and he was put in charge, 
and then Asbury began his journey southward. The 
family from which Mary Washington came, the 
Balls, lived in Lancaster county, and one of the 
wealthy and aristocratic Balls, a widow, had become 
a Methodist. "A lady," said Asbury, "came by craft 
and took her from her house, and with tears, threats, 
and entreaties urged her to desist from receiving the 
preachers and Methodist preaching; and all in vain." 
This most excellent woman was for a long time the 
stanch friend and warm supporter of Asbury. 

Coming through Gloucester, York, and preaching 
as he went, he came to Portsmouth, joined Francis 
Poythress, waded the Dismal Swamp and along the 
eastern shore of North and South Carolina, and at 
last, in March of 1787, reached Charleston, where he 
joined Dr. Coke once more. 



CHAPTER XV. 

1787. 

The Tour of the Two Bishops— Dr. Coke Again— The Blue 
Meetinghouse in Charleston— Prosperity of the Work in 
South Carolina and Georgia— Central South Carolina— Jour- 
ney Northward— Virginia Conference— Baltimore Confer- 
ence— Dr. Coke in Trouble— The New Discipline— Mr. Wes- 
ley's Displeasure— Effort to Appoint a Bishop— Failure. 

a^HE journals of Asbury are for the most part 
- mere memoranda of comparatively uninterest- 
ing events. They show us the bishop flitting from 
place to place, but say little of what he did, save 
that he preached; and we are dependent upon other 
sources for a knowledge of times and places and 
men. 

Dr. Coke had made a rapid tour through a part of 
the country immediately after he was made a bishop, 
in which he had done many unwise things in his anx- 
iety to abolish what he thought was the great evil of 
slavery, and had gone back to England. After two 
rather stormy years there he returned to America, 
coming by the West Indies, where he had done some 
valuable w 7 ork. He was to meet Bishop Asbury in 
Charleston. The plucky little congregation of white 
Methodists there, assisted by the large body of negro 
members, had built a commodious and unpretentious 
wooden church in the lower part of Charleston, 
known for a long time as the Blue Meetinghouse, and 
afterwards as the Cumberland-street Church. This 
was the largest church south of Baltimore; and while 
there were not twenty-five white members in the so- 

(101) 



102 Francis Asbuby. 

ciety, the church was self-sustaining, as all the 
churches were of necessity forced to be in those 
days. 

Asbury's plans for advancing the work in the sec- 
tion which was in the South Carolina Conference 
had been very wise and successful. The states of 
South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia were 
included in this Conference. There was an arrange- 
ment of the entire work by which the great circuits 
touched each other from Virginia to Georgia. The 
historians of Methodism have had much to say of the 
faithful companions of Asbury and of their doings, 
and to them we must leave all else than an account 
of those men and that work with which the good 
bishop was immediately connected. 

The eastern parts of North Carolina and South 
Carolina near the ocean had been settled nearly a 
hundred years, but the central and western parts of 
both of these states, and much of the most desirable 
portions, had only been settled some thirty or forty 
years. They had been rapidly peopled by a motley 
body of Protestants — Germans, Scotch, Scotch-Trish, 
and pure Irish — and since the Revolutionary War 
very many families had removed from Virginia and 
Maryland into South Carolina, Georgia, and North 
Carolina, and people from these states were now 
moving continually to these newly-opened and fer 
tile fields. 

As soon as the South Carolina Conference was 
over, Asbury and Coke began their journey to the 
Virginia Conference. They went directly to Cam- 
den, and thence through the pine woods to North 
Carolina, and without adventure rapidly rode across 



Francis Asbuby. 103 

the state to Charlotte county, Virginia, where, at the 
residence of William White, the preachers of middle 
and lower Virginia were called to Conference. 

Bishop Coke, who had his ideas of an episcopacy 
drawn from his English training, could not divest 
himself of the idea that he was a prelate, and while 
he was in England he had of his own will changed 
the time and place of the meeting of the Conferences 
after they had been fixed. He was astonished at the 
dissatisfaction which was manifested, and manifest 
ed very decidedly in the Conferences he met. There 
was a very large crowd present in this then new coun 
try; three thousand were supposed to be assembled. 
As soon as the Virginia Conference was over, the two 
bishops hurried to the Baltimore Conference, which 
met in Baltimore the next w r eek. They reached the 
city on Monday, and on Tuesday the Conference met. 
It was evident that there was a storm brewing. The 
doctor was nettled at the prospect, and when Nelson 
Reed w T as making his protest, Coke said: "You must 
think you are my equals." "Yes, sir," ,said the in- 
trepid Marylander, "we do; and we are not only the 
equals of Dr. Coke, but of Dr. Coke's king." 

The impetuous little doctor was as ready to yield 
when he was wrong as he was to assert his authority, 
and so he signed a very humble statement that while 
he was out of America he would exercise no govern- 
ment over the American churches, and while he was 
in it he would simply preside at Conferences, ordain 
according to law, and travel at large. 

Asbury simply says: "We had some warm and 
close debates at Conference, but all ended in love 
and peace." 

The two bishops went together to New York, Bish- 



104 Francis As bury. 

op Coke doing all the preaching, Asbury silent from 
necessity, for his throat was in bad condition. When 
he was able, he began to preach again, and now in the 
city, now in the country, he was at work. In New 
York he met the leaders and trustees, and after some 
explanation, "settled matters" relative to singing in 
public worship. If he settled them then, they have 
become sadly unsettled since that time. He went to 
New Rochelle, and found it as it was sixteen years 
before, when he was on the New York Circuit. "14 
there is no change," he says, "I will trouble them no 
more." 

He says "his body was weak, his soul peaceful, 
and he had power over all sin." For the first time in 
his ministry he went up the Hudson as far as West 
Point. He merely surveyed the field, and then 
turned his face southward again through northern 
New Jersey to Philadelphia, through northern Mary- 
land and to the springs at Bath. 

The Discipline, upon which he and John Dickins 
had been at work the year before, was now pub- 
lished. In the Discipline of 1784, adopted by the 
Christmas Conference, the second question was as 
follows: "What can be done in order to the future 
union of the Methodists?" Answer: "'During the 
life of the Rev. Mr. Wesley we acknowledge our- 
selves his sons in the gospel, ready in all matters be- 
longing to Church government to obey his com- 
mands." This second question and answer were left 
out of the Discipline in 1787, and to add to the of- 
fensiveness of this act to Mr. Wesley the two super- 
intendents were called bishops. 

The publication of the Discipline, with the changes 
made in it, was not the only ground of offense which 



Francis As bury. 105 

Mr. Asbury gave Mr. Wesley. He was known by 
Mr. Wesley to be the ruling spirit in the connection. 
Mr. Wesley had never been willing to surrender any 
part of the power with which he honestly believed 
he had been divinely invested, and he had no idea 
of giving up his control of the American societies 
to Mr. Asbury or anyone else. So he sent them, 
through Dr. Coke, peremptory orders to ordain 
Mr. Whatcoat a bishop, which the Conference as 
peremptorily refused to do. They had introduced 
into the minutes the binding minute in 1784, by 
which he understood that they bound themselves to 
do what they now positively refused to do, and now 
to prevent any further misunderstanding they sim- 
ply repealed the minute, and left off the name of 
Mr. Wesley. Of course, Mr. Asbury incurred all the 
blame for their action.* 

Dr. Coke was silly enough to say in his funeral 
sermon on Mr. Wesley that this act of discourtesy 
from the Conference hastened Mr. Wesley's death. 
The Conference did not intend to leave Mr. Wesley 
in any doubt of where it stood, and while it may not 
have been pleasant for him to know it, yet that it 
had the effect which Dr. Coke intimated was not at 
all probable. 

Mr. Vasey, who came over with Dr. Coke, was so 
offended that he obtained ordination from Bishop 
White, and said very bitter things of Bishop As- 
bury. He retracted them afterwards, but returned 
to England, and by Mr. Wesley's consent obtained a 



*Mr. Asbury said that it was James O'Kelly who defeated 
Mr. Wesley's aim in appointing Whatcoat, and the Baltimore 
Conference repealed the binding minute. 



108 Francis As bury. 

ter wrote him that he thought there was a still 
larger number in Brunswick, These statements 
would appear incredible to us if we failed to remem- 
ber how thick was the rural population of those 
counties at that time, and how destitute the people 
had been of evangelical preaching before the itiner- 
ant evangelists had come among them. Methodism 
was not now new in this section, and as the number 
of preachers increased it had been able to enter 
hitherto unentered fields, and had secured a large 
body of clerical and lay workers to till them. 

The effort to advance the work had led to the ap- 
pointment in 1786 of John Major and Thomas Hum- 
phreys to Georgia, and now Asbury went to the first 
Conference in that state. It was held in the forks 
of Broad River, probably near the home of James 
Marks, one of Asbury's old Virginia friends who 
had removed to Georgia. 

After the session of the Conference Asbury passed 
through the foothills and mountains of North Caro- 
lina. His aim was now to go into the Holston coun 
try. He had held the Georgia Conference in the 
early part of April, and, crossing the Savannah 
River into South Carolina, he came on into western 
North Carolina and into the Yadkin country, and 
there he and his companions had their horses shod, 
preparatory to a hard ride across the mountains of 
North Carolina into what is now Johnson county, 
Tennessee. He crossed three ranges of mountains: 
the first he called steel, the second stone, the third 
iron. He and his companions were moving north- 
ward toward General Russell's, whose home was 
where Saltville now is. The trail (for it was nothing 
more) led across the head waters of the Watauga 



Francis Asbuuy. 109 

River. The country was almost entirely unsettled, 
and there was a terrific thunder storm while they 
were on their way. They found a dirty house, where 
the filth might have been taken from the floor with a 
spade, and sought shelter in it. They could not get 
wood to kindle a fire, but managed to get through 
the night, and the next day they reached the head 
waters of the Watauga, and fed, and reached Ward's 
that night. When they reached the river the next 
day, the preachers crossed in a canoe, swimming 
their horses beside it; and in order to avoid high 
water they took an old trail through the mountains. 
Night came on in the wild, and, with a severe head- 
ache, he pressed on toward Greer's. In answer to 
prayer his head was eased and his fever abated, and 
at nine o'clock he reached Greer's; and set out the 
next day to find Cox's, on one of the branches of the 
Holsfon Eiver. The road was through a wood; he 
had two horses, one to carry his baggage and one to 
ride, and the weary packhorse, delighted with the 
rich herbage along his way, would neither lead nor 
drive. If he was prevented from grazing by tying 
his head up, he ran back; and if he was permitted to 
graze, he would not follow. The good bishop was 
not a little tried. He crossed the north fork of the 
Holston and met Tunnell in Washington county, 
and together they went to where Raltville now is. 

In one of the most picturesque valleys of south- 
western Virginia is the village of Saltville, where 
for over a hundred years a wonderful spring has 
furnished its saline waters for the kettle. Here 
General William Campbell had brought his bonnie 
bride, the sister of Patrick Henry, and when he died 
General Russell had wedded her. They lived here 



110 Francis As bury. 

in great comfort. John Tunnell had found a home 
at this hospitable house, and now Bishop Asbury 
and his companion were welcomed to it. The bish- 
op preached on Sunday, and on Tuesday he went to 
Easley's, on the Holston, thence to K.'s. He entered 
East Tennessee, probably about where Bristol is. 
and went on to Owens's, where the delegation from 
Kentucky met him. He came to a place he calls 
"Half Acres and Key Woods," and held his Confer 
encewith the few preachers that were in the Holston 
country and that had come from Kentucky to meet 
him. Tennessee was the rather rebellious daughter 
of North Carolina, and was now trying to set up the 
new state of Franklin, and there was civil war; how- 
ever, Asbury did not allow this to disturb him, but 
made this brief visit, and then returned to General 
Russell's, where he again received his rested horse, 
and began his journey through upper North Carolina 
eastward. This was his first visit to the Holston 
country. 

He made his way as far south as Greensboro, 
North Carolina, and thence northward to Peters- 
burg, Virginia, where the Virginia Conference met. 
After its adjournment he began his journey to a 
hitherto unvisited section— the Greenbrier country, 
in the present West Virginia. 

General Assistant Asbury had some years before 
sent missionaries to the beautiful country which lies 
beyond the Alleghany Mountains in Virginia. It 
had been only a few years since the land had been 
freed from the dangers of Indian invasion, and it had 
now been settled by an enterprising, sturdy race of 
Scotch-Irish and German people. The pure English 
element was very small, but German and Scotch- 



Francis Asbury. Ill 

Irish Protestants — generally Presbyterians or Lu- 
therans — were in numbers. They found themselves 
away from pastors and churches; living in remote 
sections widely separated from each other, with 
no churches built nor even schoolhouses estab- 
lished, they were without clerical care. The circuit 
preacher had found them out, and began a work in 
an apparently unfriendly soil, which brought forth 
a large harvest. One of the first churches west of 
the Alleghanies had been built in what was then 
called Greenbrier county. It was called Rehoboth. 
This church still stands, or rather its successor 
which bears its name, in what is now Monroe county, 
West Virginia. 

To this remote part of Greenbrier Bishop Asbury 
and Richard Whatcoat now came. The bishop was 
to hold a quarterly meeting there. His faithful co- 
laborer, Le Roy Cole, was on the district, and John 
Smith, a young preacher, was on the circuit. Bishop 
Asbury and his companion left Lynchburg, and 
passed westward through Buckingham, Bedford, 
and Botetourt into Greenbrier. His journal merely 
states the fact that the journey was made, but says 
nothing of the toil of making it; and one must know 
something of the old trail to the west through Fin- 
castle, of the mountains which were to be climbed, 
and the long rides through almost unpeopled wilds, 
before he can appreciate the labors of the bishop in 
making the journey a hundred years ago. He sim- 
ply says: "Heavy rains, bad roads, straying bewil- 
dered in the woods: through all these I worried. I 
had a high fever, and was otherwise distressed in 
body and ill at ease in mind." He preached as he 
went, and was the first American bishop of any name 



112 Fmancis Asbuby. 

who was ever seen in this remote section of Virginia. 
At last he crossed the great Alleghany range, but by 
no means passed out of the mountains; his entire 
journey, after he entered them, was up and down 
from one mountain to another. He makes little 
complaint. He merely says the journey was made, 
and that after preaching at Rehoboth he started 
northward. His aim was to reach Clarksburg, which 
was in northwestern Virginia, and to do this he had 
to ride over the wildest mountains in the state. 

The beautiful prairies, or savannas as they were 
called, were covered with rich native grass, and 
many cattle were fattened on these plains ; and while 
the country w y as new, yet in these valleys there were 
settlers whose humble homes were opened to As- 
bury and his companions. The travelers rode from 
what is now Monroe county into the Great Levels, as 
the rich Greenbrier valley is called, and crossed a 
mountain range into the Little Levels, a fertile val- 
ley in what is now Pocahontas county. Here the 
McNiels, a family of Scotch-Irish people who had be- 
come Methodists, had their comfortable homes, and 
Asbury mentions them in his journal. The descend- 
ants of these people still live in their old homes, and 
the home which sheltered Asbury and McKendree 
was still standing a few years ago. 

After leaving this valley, he started to Clarksburg, 
entering Tigert's valley, which he calls "Tyger's Val- 
ley." He says: "We came to an old forsaken habita- 
tion. Here our horses grazed while we boiled our 
meat; at midnight we brought up at Jones's. At four 
in the morning we journeyed on through devious, 
lonely wilds, where no food might be found, except 
what srrew in the woods or was carried with us. We 



Francis Asbuby. 113 

met two women going to quarterly meeting at Clarks- 
burg. Near midnight we stopped at A.'s, who hissed 
his dogs at us, but the women were determined to 
get to the quarterly meeting, and so we went in. 
Our supper was tea; brothers Phoebus and Cook 

took to the woods. Old gave up his bed to the 

women; I lay along the floor, on a few deer skins, 
with the fleas. That night our poor horses got no 
corn, and the next morning they had to swim the 
Monongahela. After a twenty miles' ride we came 
to Clarksburg, but we were so outdone it took us ten 
hours to accomplish it." 

The journey he made led him through Pocahontas, 
Webster, Braxton, Lewis, and Harrison counties. 
At Clarksburg he lodged with Colonel Jackson. 
This Colonel Jackson was the grandfather of "Stone- 
wall" Jackson, the great general. 

The Baptists were in these mountains before the 
Methodists came, and had a long, close room in 
which the Methodists held their Conference. There 
were seven hundred persons present to attend the 
quarterly meeting. 

The journey was resumed on Monday, and it was 
still through the mountains. "Oh, how glad I should 
be [he says] of plain, clean plank as preferable to 
most of the beds! and where the beds are in a bad 
state, the floors are worse." The gnats were as bad 
as mosquitoes, and the wild frontiersmen were hard- 
ly acquainted with the decencies of life. "They had 
been fighting Indians [ Asbury said] till it made them 
cruel, and then the only preaching they heard was 
the hyper-Calvinism of Antinomians. Good moral- 
ists they are not, and good Christians they cannot 
be till they are better taught." 
8 



114 Francis As bury. 

He preached in Morgantown, and after riding for 
two days reached Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where 
the Conference met. 

The journey he had made from North Carolina to 
Pennsylvania had led him almost entirely through 
the frontier settlements, and much of it through 
wild mountains, many of which at the present time 
are as wild as they were when he passed through 
them. The people were then as wild as the mount- 
ains, and the preachers he had sent out to evangelize 
them were exposed to every trial; and he was will- 
ing, in order to save them from long journeys to Con- 
ference, to expose himself to the fatigue and priva- 
tion of this weary tour. 

Richard Whatcoat was his traveling companion, 
and the journey had made both ill. They, however, 
returned to Virginia, and stopped a little while at 
Bath. There he tried to preach a sermon on "The 
Lame and Blind.' 9 "The discourse," he said, "was 
lame, and the people were blind. " 

The college, so unwisely begun, had given him al- 
most as much care as Kingswood School gave Mr. 
Wesley, and now at Bath he heard that both the 
teachers were gone. 

During this journey, rough as it was, he had been 
busy reading Mosheim, a book which one would not 
likely take for reading on the wing. He went from 
Bath to Baltimore, where he met the Maryland 
preachers in September, 1788. The view he gives 
of the Conference is a pleasing one. The old Light- 
street church was now completed, and Conference 
met in it. The Dutch church of Mr. Otterbein was 
also at the service of the Conference. There began 
on Sunday a gracious revival, and sinners cried for 



Francis As bury. 115 

mercy, and perhaps twenty souls were converted be- 
fore the meeting closed on Tuesday. The puzzling 
college affairs were settled as best they could be, and 
he began his northward journey again. 

In three days he was in Philadelphia, and the Con- 
ference for the eastern part of Pennsylvania and 
New Jersey was attended to, and he began his move 
southward. On the eastern shore of Maryland and 
Virginia, and through Delaware, he preached in 
great feebleness and weariness, but with great 
power and earnestness, finding a gracious revival in- 
fluence wherever he went. He was troubled about 
college debts, but his friends helped him out, and, 
visiting Cokesbury, he tried to put things in order in 
the college, and then rode through the western 
shore of Maryland into Virginia, and by his old 
route to Charleston, South Carolina, once more. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

1789. 

Mr. Wesley's Famous Letter and the Council — Georgia — Daniel 
Grant — Wesley and Whitefield School — Mr. Wesley's Letter 
— North Carolina — The Council. 

BISHOP ASBURY had perhaps delayed his com- 
ing to the south in 1789 because he expected to 
meet Dr. Coke in Charleston; but when he reached 
there Coke had not arrived, and a few days after he 
began his journey to Georgia. He had gone only a 
short distance, however, before Coke joined him. 
He had reached Charleston a few hours after Asbury 
left. They crossed the Savannah Eiver at Sand-bar 
Ferry and rode on by the old road to Washington 
and to Grant's, where the Conference was to be 
held. 

Daniel Grant was the descendant of an old Scotch 
family. He was a man of good culture for those 
times, and of profound piety. He had at one time 
been a Presbyterian elder in Hanover county, Vir- 
ginia, in the church of Samuel Davies, and after- 
wards lived in Granville county, North Carolina, 
where he had been an elder in the Grassy Creek 
church. Thence he had removed to Georgia. When 
he heard the Methodists, he invited them to his 
house to preach, and finally joined them and built a 
church, the first Methodist church in Georgia. His 
son, Thomas, had become a member of the Church 
also, and lived near him. They carried on a large 
mercantile business at Grant's Store, in Wilkes 
(116) 



Francis As bury. 117 

county, and being well off in the world's goods, they 
were able to dispense a generous hospitality. The 
Conference met at their house and held its sessions 
in the church near by. Mr. Asbury approved the 
scheme which some of the preachers had made for a 
Methodist school in Georgia. This was to be called 
the Wesley and Whitefield School, and the scheme 
was to buy five hundred acres of land and establish 
the school and get donations of land for its endow- 
ment. Bishop Coke, who was with Asbury, second- 
ed the idea with great heartiness, and a subscription 
was started. The subscriptions were to be paid in 
cattle or land or tobacco or money. In the county 
of Wilkes there were, besides Grant's, Meriwether's 
and Scott's meetinghouses which Asbury mentions. 
David Meriw T ether had become a Methodist. He be- 
longed to a distinguished and wealthy Virginia fam- 
ily who had been, as far as they were anything, 
Church-of-England people; he was the first Metho- 
dist among them. The bishops had, however, no 
time for a tour through Georgia, and pressed on to 
South Carolina. They rode the two hundred miles 
to Charleston in four days. 

Here Asbury received a letter from Mr. Wesley, the 
last he ever had from his pen. He says of it: "Here 
I received a bitter pill from one of my greatest 
friends. Praise the Lord for my trials also! May 
they be sanctified." This letter has been often pa- 
raded by those who had little love for Mr. Wesley as 
a means of rebuking the pretensions of those for 
whom they had still less. It was written by an old 
man eighty-six years old, and written to one whom 
he regarded almost as his child. It can only be ex- 
cused because of this fact. The charge that As- 



118 Francis As bury. 

bury was striving to make himself great, because 
he strove to keep himself from being ridiculous, was 
only to be passed by since a somewhat childish old 
man made it. If Mr. Wesley had not designed to 
make Mr. Asbury a bishop, what had he designed? 
If he had not believed he was an episcopos himself, 
why had he acted as one? Perhaps next to God, 
Asbury venerated Mr. Wesley, and yet he had been 
misread by him time and again. We, however, give 
the letter just as it was : 

London, September 20, 1788. 

There is, indeed, a wide difference between the relations 
wherein you stand to the Americans and the relations where- 
in I stand to all Methodists. You are the elder brother of 
the American Methodists: I am, under God, the father of the 
whole family. Therefore, I naturally care for you all in a 
manner no other person can do. Therefore, I, in a measure, 
provide for you all; for the supplies which Dr. Coke provides 
for you, he could not provide were it not for me — were it not 
that I not only permit him to collect, but also support him in 
so doing. But in one point, my dear brother, I am a little 
afraid both the doctor and you differ from me. I study to be 
little; you study to be great. I creep; you strut along. I 
found a school; you a college! Nay, and call it after your own 
names! O, beware! Do not seek to be something! Let me 
be nothing, and "Christ be all in all!" 

One instance of this, of your greatness, has given me great 
concern. How can you, how dare you, suffer yourself to be 
called bishop? I shudder, I start at the very thought! Men 
may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am 
content; but they shall never, by my consent, call me a Mshop. 
For my sake, for God's sake, for Christ's sake, put a fell end 
to this! Let the Presbyterians do what they please, but let 
the Methodists know their calling better. Thus, my dear 
Franky, I have told you all that is in my heart. And let this, 
when I am no more seen, bear witness how sincerely I am 
Your affectionate friend and brother, 

John Wesley. 



Francis As bury. 119 

The letter pained kirn, but did not cause him to 
abate his work, for as soon as the Conference ended 
its session he was on his way again. 

He went northward to North Carolina, where, at 
McKnight's, in a month's time he was to have an- 
other Conference, and by the 3d of April he had rid- 
den three hundred miles, and the poor horses had 
suffered because of it. They reached McKnight's on 
the Yadkin, and the Holston brethren met with 
them, and their next stop was in Petersburg Vir- 
ginia. Asbury allowed Bishop Coke to do all the 
preaching. On one Sunday, having no appointment, 
they pushed on until they reached Leesburg. They 
found a lively religious state all along the way 
through Virginia and Maryland, and when they 
reached Baltimore " the meetings were very live- 
ly," he says, "and one night the people continued 
together till three o'clock in the morning; many 
have professed to be convicted, converted, sancti- 
fied." 

It would be monotonous to follow him in his wan- 
derings the remainder of this year. They covered 
very much the same ground that he had been over 
before, and were amid much the same scenes. His 
heart was greatly cheered by the great revival 
which he found everywhere, and much to his pleas- 
ure there was much noise in it. "Noble shouting" 
delighted his heroic heart. He was now trying to 
raise money to keep the needy at the schools and 
raising the first educational collection. 

It had been now nearly five years since the Christ- 
mas Conference which organized the Methodist 
Episcopal Church had held its session and ad- 
journed, and there had been no general meeting of 



120 Francis Asbuby. 

the preachers. In order to do anything it was neces- 
sary to pass the measure round among the Confer- 
ences, and the veto of one could defeat the will of the 
rest. Bishop Asbury did not see the need of a Gen- 
eral Conference, nor possibly of any more legisla- 
tion, but he felt the need of a general body of advis- 
ers, and he proposed the formation of a council, 
which should be composed of the men of his choice, 
and they were to be invested with almost plenary 
powers. He hoped the Conferences would accede to 
his plan, and the council was selected and called to- 
gether. They were among the best men he had, and 
he thought the plan would be eminently satisfactory 
to his brethren; and he was now hurrying to Balti- 
more to be at the first session of this celebrated and 
shortlived council. 

Bishop Asbury says, December 6, 1789: "Our 
council was seated, consisting of the following per- 
sons, namely: Richard Ivey, from Georgia; E. Ellis, 
E. Morris, Phil Bruce, James O'Kelly, L. Green, Nel- 
son Reed, I. Everett, John Dickins, J. O. Cromwell, 
Freeborn Garrettson. All our business was done in 
love and unanimity." He was highly pleased with 
the result of his experiment, and he had certainly 
shown good judgment in the selection of the con- 
clave. 

This was the beginning of the council. The legal- 
izing of this conclave and defining its powers were 
dependent upon what the Conferences would say. 
There was little question in the mind of Bishop 
Asbury that the plan he had devised would be ac- 
cepted, but he heard the mutterings of the storm be- 
fore the council had adjourned its session many 
weeks. That dear man, James O'Kelly, who had ris- 



Francis As bury. 121 

en from his bed at midnight to pray for Asbury when 
they first met, and who had been made a member of 
the council, did not like the trend of things; and As 
bury says on the 12th of January, 1790: "I received a 
letter from the presiding elder of this district, James 
O'Kelly. He makes heavy complaints of my power, 
and bids me stop for one year or he must use his in- 
fluence against me. Power! power! there is not a 
vote given in a Conference in which the presiding 
elder has not greatly the advantage of me. All the 
influence I am to gain over a company of young men 
in a district must be done in three weeks. The 
greater part of them are perhaps seen by me alone 
at Conference, while the presiding elder has been 
with them all the year and has the greatest opportu- 
nity of gaining influence. This advantage may be 
abused. Let the bishops look to it. But who has 
the power to lay an embargo on me and to make of 
none effect the decision of all the Conferences of the 
union?" The battle was now on. O'Kelly wrote 
Coke and presented his side of the case, and in the 
meantime Asbury used his personal influence to se- 
cure the indorsement of the Conferences. When the 
council met in Philip Rogers's house it coolly re- 
solved that "it had the right to manage the temporal 
concerns of the Church and college decisively, and 
to recommend to the Conferences for ratification 
whatever we judged might be advantageous to the 
spiritual well-being of the whole body:'" This was 
certainly a rather sweeping proposition from a body 
whose hold on life was so frail, but at the Virginia 
Conference it received its deathblow, and the Gen- 
eral Conference was called for, to meet in Balti- 
more in 1792. 



122 Francis As bury. 

I have preferred to interrupt the current of the 
story and give the whole history of this matter as 
Asbury's journal gives it. He had conceived the 
idea of the council and had selected the best men of 
the Church to form it, but he says comparatively 
little about it, and the general minutes make no men 
tion at all of its origin, its beginning, or of its ending. 
The various Church histories give its history in ex- 
tenso. It no doubt originated with Bishop Asbury, 
and was designed to supersede the necessity for the 
calling of a General Conference. Mr. Asbury did 
not have great confidence in the vox poptcli even 
among the preachers. He thought he knew best 
what ought to be done, and while he was not unwill- 
ing to take advice if he thought it good, he was anx- 
ious to select those whose duty it would be to give 
it. The council was well designed, but it had in it 
the seeds of death, and it had but two unsatisfactory 
sessions. In order to meet the convenience of the 
preachers, they had been acting by sections; but so 
jealous were they of their rights that no act was 
obligatory on any until all of them had had an op- 
portunity to vote and speak upon it, and the 
negative of one Conference defeated the measure. 
The council was composed of the best men in the 
connection whom Mr. Asbury could select, but it 
was after all Mr. Asbury's voice which was heard. 
He himself was much pleased at the results of 
the first session and much disappointed when it 
failed. 

The council adjourned in the early part of Decem- 
ber, and with Eichard Whatcoat as a companion As- 
bury began his journey to the south, and at the end 
of the year 1789 he found himself in Gloucester, Vir- 



Francis As bury. 123 

ginia. This part of the tide-water country was at 
that time the wealthiest section of that then wealthy 
state, and here Methodism had made an impression 
upon the leading people, and he was accustomed to 
pay them an annual visit. 

He was now hurrying to the south, that he might 
meet the South Carolina Conference, which was to 
meet in Charleston in February. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

1790. 

Over the Continent — North Carolina — Charleston — Georgia — 
Western North Carolina — Over the Mountains — General Bus- 
sell's — Kentucky — Virginia — Pennsylvania — Cokesbury. 

THE beginning of 1790 found Asbury in the cen- 
ter of the tide-water country in Virginia, has- 
tening as rapidly as possible toward the south. The 
rivers were crossed with great difficulty, and he had 
the Potomac, the James, and the Ronoake to cross 
near their mouths. The cost for ferriage alone, he 
says, was £3. He passed through the section in 
which James O'Kelly had long exerted great influ- 
ence, and it was on this journey that O'Kelly made 
the complaint alluded to in our last chapter. Aft- 
er crossing the Roanoke River into North Carolina, 
he rode westward through the then thickly-settled 
counties of central North Carolina. The journey 
was free from incident, and by the 10th of February 
he was in Charleston once more, where he met the 
South Carolina Conference. 

This Conference, which did not at that time in- 
clude Georgia, was a small body, and after a short 
session the good bishop rode on his way to Georgia, 
and entering it near Augusta he preached at the old 
church in Burke county, which is still an appoint- 
ment in the Burke Circuit, and at a church near 
Fenn's Bridge in Jefferson county. He was now mak- 
ing search for a section of land on which to locate the 
Wesley and Whitefield school. The land he exam- 
(124) 



Francis As bury. 125 

ined did not suit him, and the purchase was not 
made. He met the Conference of Georgia preachers 
again at Grant's, and after a short session he began 
his journey northward. On his way he rested at a 
brother Herbert's, in Elbert county, where the saint- 
ly Major had passed away. Asbury said that a poor 
sinner was struck with conviction at the grave of 
this weeping prophet, whose voice he heard calling 
him to repentance. John Andrew, the father of 
James O. Andrew, was on the circuit at this time, 
and Asbury says he heard of a woman who sent for 
him to preach her funeral sermon while she was liv- 
ing. The quaint preacher did so, and she was 
blessed under the word and died in peace. 

With a rapid ride he came into western North Car- 
olina. Here he was taken with a disorder that 
proved fatal to his grandfather, and he was serious 
and despondent. Death, he thought, was not far 
away, and he says somewhat innocently: "I could 
give up the Church, the colleges, and the schools; 
nevertheless there is one drawback. What will my 
enemies and mistaken friends say? Why, that 'he 
hath offended the Lord, and he hath taken him 
away.'" He was on his way to Kentucky, and the 
journey was made by crossing the mountains into 
Johnson county, Tennessee, across the head waters 
of the Watauga and the'Holston. The house in 
which they slept was without a cover; the wolves 
howled, and rain fell in torrents. They crossed the 
mountain in the rain, and while the good bishop 
was looking for the guide he was carried with full 
force against a tree, but with no serious damage. To 
add to his misfortunes, when they reached the Hol- 
ston country they turned the horses out to graze, 



126 Francis As bury. 

and they could not find them. They had either been 
stolen by the Indians or strayed afar. At last the 
estrays were recovered, and he pursued the same 
course he had taken on his first journey to the Hol- 
ston country, going from North Carolina into Ten- 
nessee, and thence to his friend General Russell's, 
where there was a little time to rest and prepare for 
the dangerous journey to Kentucky. The Indians 
had been on the war path, and there was constant 
danger from them. The road was dreary and he 
was sick, but the untiring man pressed on. Peter 
Massie and John Clark, from Kentucky, met him, 
and then the footsteps of the sick man were turned 
toward Kentucky. He came into Kentucky through 
Moccasin Gap, along the north branch of the Hol- 
ston and the Clinch, and through the wilds across 
the Kentucky River, until at length they reached the 
settlement at Lexington. When he returned he 
came by the Crab Orchard and by Cumberland Gap, 
and back again to General Russell's. He now made 
his way as rapidly as possible to McKnight's, on the 
Yadkin, where the Conference had been awaiting his 
coming for two weeks. There was no rest for him. 
The Conference here was no sooner over than he 
pressed on to Petersburg, in Virginia, where he met 
the Virginia Conference, and where he had the trou- 
ble he looked for about the council. 

Although the year was only half gone, he had al- 
ready crossed the Alleghanies and the other ranges 
of the great Appalachian chain four times, but was' 
to climb them again before the year ended ; for after 
leaving Petersburg he made the same journey 
through Botetourt and Greenbrier to Uniontowm, 
Pennsylvania, by the route of which we have given 



Francis As bury. 127 

account in our last chapter. Then the weary man 
turned his face toward the east, where the comforts 
of an old civilization were to be found. To one who 
had been for long months among the rocks, mount- 
ains, rattlesnakes, fleas, and cabins, the change to a 
land of comfortable and often elegant homes must 
have been a relief as much as a pleasure. He had 
but little time to tarry anywhere, and he made a hur- 
ried journey through Maryland, during which time 
he visited Cokesbury. 

The college was now fairly under way, and there 
were forty-six students. There were some public ex- 
ercises, evidently for his benefit, some philosophical 
lectures by the faculty, and in the afternoon the boys 
declaimed. Some parts of this exercise w T ere very ex- 
ceptionable, and the stern bishop took note of them. 
The rules adopted were revised. Impracticable be- 
fore, they were doubtless more so afterwards. 

Asbury presided over the Philadelphia Conference 
in September and the New York Conference in Octo- 
ber. Then he journeyed through Chester, where he 
found that the good widow Withey, who kept the 
best inn on the continent and always entertained the 
preachers, was feeble in body and depressed in mind; 
from which depression, one is glad to know, the good 
Mary made a happy recovery. He came through the 
eastern shore of Delaware and Maryland, the bright 
est spot to him in all the land, and finally reached 
Baltimore in December, where the council met at his 
friend Philip Rogers's, and had its second and last 
session. He ended the year of immense labor in the 
heart of Virginia, having made a circuit that extend 
ed from New York and the Atlantic on the north and 
east to the remotest points on the western frontier. 



CHAPTER XIX. • 

1791. 

Arminian Magazine — Coke's Arrival in Charleston — William 
Hammett — Georgia Conference — Virginia — Wesley's Death 
— Coke's Keturn to England— Jesse Lee — New England — As- 
bury's Visit. 

DURING the year 1790 the second volume of the 
Arminian Magazine had been issued. It was 
almost an exact reproduction of the Arminian Maga- 
zine in England, and seems to us of this day a some- 
what dull and dreary volume, filled with the inter- 
minable discussions of Calvinistic errors. Asbury 
says he finished reading the second volume, and not- 
withstanding its defects it w T as one of the best and 
cheapest books in America. He says the poetry 
might be better, and no one will be likely to contro- 
vert him. 

The route that Asbury took to reach Charleston 
was the same he had traveled before. He found, 
however, much to his gratification, that Methodism 
,was securing a stronger foothold in all this tide- 
water country. The journey, always a disagreeable 
one in winter, at last ended in Charleston. 

An entry in the journal shows that Asbury still 
used the Church service provided by Wesley in 1784. 
He says: "I read prayers, after which brother Ellis 
preached." 

The young preachers in Georgia were now engaged 
in a controversy. History does not say with whom, 
but likelv with the Baptists, then beginning a very 
(128) 



Francis As bury. 129 

aggressive campaign under Silas Mercer, and the 
Caivinistic Presbyterians. Asbury objected serious- 
ly to it, and said we had better work to do. 

The indefatigable Dr. Coke, at Mr. Wesley's in- 
stance, had come by the West Indies to South Caro- 
lina. Near Charleston he had been wrecked on 
Edisto Island, but he made his way to Charleston, 
and brought with him William Hammett, a young 
Irishman, who afterwards gave Asbury a world of 
trouble. The people were anxious to have the gifted 
Irishman appointed as their preacher; but it was a 
thing unheard of among the Methodists that the peo- 
ple should choose their own preacher, and so Mr. As- 
bury sent Ellis and Parks instead, much to the dis- 
satisfaction of the people, and as much to the dissat- 
isfaction of Mr. Hammett. After the Conference in 
Charleston was over, Bishop Coke took one route 
and Bishop Asbury another to unite at Scott's, in 
Wilkes county, where the Conference was to be held. 
It is evident that the meeting between the two bish- 
ops was not very cordial, that their relations were 
somewhat strained. Dr. Coke had evidently been in 
correspondence with O'Kelly, and he had come to 
America, possibly after consultation with Mr. Wes- 
ley, to put a speedy end to the council. The good 
bishops came to an understanding, however, and de- 
cided that the council was to be among the things of 
the past, and that a General Conference was to be 
called. 

Asbury made his way to- Georgia by going through 
Beaufort and Barnwell and into Burke county in 
Georgia. When in Waynesboro he spent a night 
with an intelligent Jew, Henry by name, who joined 
with him in reading the Hebrew Bible till late in the 
9 



130 Francis As bury. 

night. The people in the very insignificant village 
of Waynesboro, as it was then, paid little heed to the 
earnest bishop when he tried to gather them into the 
courthouse for service, and he says: "Catch me here 
again till things are changed and mended." 

The Conference met at Scott's, a church in Wilkes 
county, and Asbury and Coke were both present. 
Matters in Georgia were not prosperous as far as re- 
ligion was concerned. Everything was in a bustle, 
the new lands were being settled, emigrants were 
crowding into the new state, negroes were now being 
hurried into the newly-settled country by the Old 
and New England slave dealers, since the slave trade 
was to end in a few years, and nothing was favorable 
to religion. Decline had begun, and decline contin- 
ued for several weary, gloomy years. As the two 
bishops passed on their way northward through 
South Carolina, they preached to the Catawba In- 
dians who were still there. They made their way to 
McKnight's on the Yadkin, and thence through the 
midst of Virginia to Petersburg, where the Virginia 
Conference was to meet. Here a crumb of comfort 
was given to those who were so displeased with the 
condition of things, and they were now assured that 
the council should meet no more, and the General 
Conference should meet during the next year. 

It was on this tour that the tidings reached them 
that the good Wesley was dead. It was high time 
that his trusted lieutenant, Dr. Coke, should set off 
for England, and so the two bishops hurried to the 
first seaport where shipping could be secured. 
While they were in Baltimore, Dr. Coke was re- 
quested to preach a memorial sermon. The little 
doctor was never discreet, and he wounded his breth- 



Francis As bury. 131 

ren deeply by telling them that the good Wesley's 
death was no doubt hastened by their leaving his 
name off the minutes and repealing the celebrated 
resolution. As Mr. Wesley was eighty-eight years 
old, and had outlived all the male members of his 
family, it is hardly likely that the conjecture of the 
good doctor was correct. 

Coke was needed in England, where things were 
in much of a chaos, despite the chancery bill with its 
legal hundred, and so he left Mr. Asbury alone and 
hurried home. 

The Charleston people had been much charmed by 
the fervid Irishman Dr. Coke had brought with him, 
and wanted him as their preacher; and not satisfied 
with Mr. Asbury's first refusal, they sent Mr. Ham- 
mett himself with a petition all the way to Philadel- 
phia only to have their labor for their trouble, for 
Mr. Asbury refused them again. Mr. Hammett was, 
however, put up to preach in New York and Philadel- 
phia, which preaching was less acceptable to the 
people than it had been to those in Charleston. 

The bishop now presided over the New York Con- 
ference, which then included New England, and 
made ready for his first trip to New England. 

When Asbury was on his first southern tour, 
in company with Jesse Lee and Henry Willis, he 
passed through Cheraw, South Carolina, and Lee 
was thrown in company with a young New Eu- 
glander. The New Englander told the companion- 
able Virginian what was to him a doleful story of 
the religious destitution in New England. A land 
where the people were all Calvinists — where there 
were no class meetings and love feasts, where no- 
body ever shouted in meeting — was a land demand- 



132 Francis Asbury. 

ing missionary care, and the young man was anxious 
to. go there at once, but Asbury had other work for 
hini, and he did not go until five years had passed ; 
then he went. He had far from a cordial reception, 
but he went on his way hammering, as he said, on 
the Saybrook platform, and running a tilt against al- 
most everything the good New En glanders held dear. 
He roamed over Connecticut, Rhode Island, and 
Massachusetts, and at last secured a foothold in sev- 
eral places. He was now a member of the New York 
Conference, and was appointed to the New England 
Circuit. 

The time had now come for Asbury to visit New 
England, and after the close of the New York Con- 
ference he, in company with Jesse Lee, turned his 
face toward the land of the Presbyterians, as he 
called the Congregationalists. New England had 
been settled for nearly one hundred and seventy-five 
years, and certainly did seem to need missionaries 
as little as any part of America. It was the land of 
steady habits and stalwart theology. As yet the 
Unitarian had not dared to promulgate his views, 
and was not bold enough to attack the orthodox 
faith. Arminianism, which had been so dreaded in 
the days of Jonathan Edwards fifty years before 
that a great revival had resulted from prayers to 
avert the heresy, had only now come with this 
stalwart, unceremonious, irreverent Virginian. The 
New England legislatures still levied a tax to sup- 
port the standing order. The morals of the people 
were unexceptionable, and their customs were in 
strict accord with the best Puritanic models. 

Mr. Asbury had been twenty years in America be- 
fore he put foot in New England, and now he began 



Francis Asbury. 138 

his tour by entering Connecticut. It is not probable 
that he expected a cordial reception, and he certain- 
ly did not have it. It was, however, not likely that 
when the strong, portly Lee and his delicate com- 
panion came into a quiet New England town and be- 
gan a service they would fail to draw attention to 
themselves; and if they did not please the people, 
they certainly interested them. Sometimes they 
found a church open, and sometimes the selectmen 
allowed them a house to preach in, but often they 
were homeless. 

The larger part of the country in which Asbury 
had been at work for all these years, and especially 
since he had been bishop, was a country of broad 
acres and scattered people. Much of it was new, 
and the houses were uncomely cabins, but now 
he found himself where he was never out of sight 
of a neat house, and rarely out of sight of a church. 
The country reminded him of Derbyshire in En- 
gland. The people to whom he had been preach- 
ing were generally sinners outright. They did not 
claim to be Christians, and were not formalists; 
but now he found himself where Church mem- 
bership was expected from all respectable people. 
He came to his conclusion as to the religious condi- 
tion of the states, one would think, somewhat pre- 
cipitately, since he made up his verdict in less than 
forty-eight hours after he reached Connecticut. He 
thought "there had been religion there once, but 
doubted if there was much left. There had doubt- 
less been a praying ministry nnd membership, but he 
thought now both were dead." Perhaps the good 
bishop saw through brother Lee's spectacles. The 
churches were, of course, generally closed against 



134 Francis As bury. 

hini; but the barns were open, and he preached his 
first sermon in a barn. The effect of his preaching- 
was very decided. Some smiled, some wept; some 
laughed outright, and some swore. He and his com- 
panion came to New Haven, where Yale College, 
with President Stiles, was. It was a somewhat ven- 
turesome step, and they found no church to receive 
them. Asbury preached what he evidently thought 
was a poor sermon, with the sun shining in his face. 

The next day they visited Yale College, but the 
visitors received scant courtesy. Little did Presi- 
dent Stiles and his faculty know that one of his vis- 
itors controlled a college himself, or he might have 
been more courteous. Asbury was not unmindful of 
the rudeness, and promised himself that if they came 
to Cokesbury he would treat them in a more gen- 
tlemanly way. Well, perhaps there was much to be 
said on the other side. If ever men appeared to be 
impudent intruders on the domain of others, Asbury 
and Lee so appeared to President Stiles and his asso- 
ciates. To intimate that anything more was needed 
than Yale was doing might have come with some 
grace from some people, but from these unlearned, 
fanatical men it was the height of absurdity; and 
then, too, that Arminians and prelatists should come 
on a mission to New England was both impudent and 
presumptuous. 

The bishop and his companion went on a tour 
through Rhode Island. They found sundry churches 
at Providence and Newport, but met a chilling re- 
ception in both cities; and after a hasty ride through 
the country, they reached Boston. It then had in its 
borders nine Congregational churches, one Quaker 
meetinghouse, one Sandemanian, one Roman Catho- 



Francis As bury. 135 

lie, one Universalist,and two Episcopal. The church 
of Mr. Murray was opened to them, but the hospital- 
ity the visitors received was limited. Asbury said 
even in wicked Charleston he was invited to sundry 
homes, but now no one opened his door to him. His 
congregations, too, were very small; at first not more 
than twenty-six in a large church came to hear him. 
He decided that he had done with Boston until he 
could get a house to preach in and some one to enter- 
tain him, and made his way to Lynn. Here Meth- 
odism had made an impression and secured a foot- 
hold. Here there was a home at least, and here he 
was able to hold sundry profitable services. He 
went to Salem, "where the witches were burned, and 
sought the graves of those whom the Puritans had 
put to death for their religion." There was no place 
here for this weary evangelist; although there were 
five churches, none was open to him, and he decided 
to put Salem in the same catalogue with Boston. 

At Manchester Mr. Foster, of honored memory, re- 
ceived him with great kindness, and the selectmen 
gave him the courthouse to preach in. There was a 
place where provision w r as made to entertain minis 
ters, and an amount of money offered for their serv- 
ices. The high-spirited bishop refused their hospi- 
tality and their compensation. He made quite a 
tour in Massachusetts, and was much struck with 
the earnest wish of those with whom he dined in a 
certain place, who said that the people were now 
united and did not wish to divide the parish. "Their 
fathers, the Puritans, divided the kingdom and 
Church, too," Asbury said. After a little longer stay 
in Massachusetts and Connecticut, he reentered New T 
York and came southward. 



CHAPTER XX. 

1792. 

Keturns Southward — Cokesbury Troubles — Virginia Conference 
— North Carolina Conference — Troubles in Charleston — 
Georgia Conference — Beverly Allen's Expulsion — Tour to 
Kentucky — Northward Again. 

IN the early fall Asbury returned from New En- 
gland, and, preaching as he went, made his way 
through New York, New Jersey, and Delaware to 
Baltimore. He was still burdened with Cokesbury, 
and when he reached Baltimore he trudged through 
the snow begging money to board and educate the 
orphans who came there. He was anxious to found 
a female school, and made some plans looking in that 
direction. AVith Thomas Morrill he began his jour- 
ney to the farther south, and along his accustomed 
route he made his way to Green HilPs in North Car- 
olina. The journey was an uneventful one, but was 
fatiguing. The plan of holding the Conference in 
small sections was still adhered to, and did not un- 
dergo any change till the next year. The Virginia 
Conference met at Dickinson's, in Caroline county, 
and the North Carolina Conference at that excellent 
local preacher's Green HilPs, where it held several 
of its sessions. 

During this tour he thought at one time he had se- 
cured the blessing of perfect love, and cautiously so 
expressed himself; but a few months afterwards he 
speaks in another strain. In October he says: "I am 
afraid of losing the peace I feel; for months past I 
have seemed to be in the possession of perfect love." 
(136) 



Francis As bury. 137 

But he says on the 21st of the same month: " Tempta- 
tions oppressed my soul and disease my body ; I fear 
I am not so constant in prayer as I should be." 

He did not reach Charleston as soon as usual, 
and January, 1792, found him in Norfolk, where his 
heart was gladdened by the evidences of a revival 
The North Carolina Conference was to meet early 
the next week at Green Hill's; and though the 
weather was very cold, and his exposure very great, 
he and his companion, Thomas Morrill, pressed on. 
His chief cordial, he says, was to preach at night; 
and despite his weary ride, he was always ready for 
his pulpit. Excejjt in Georgetown and Charleston, 
he says his congregations were generally good. It 
was in February before he reached Charleston. 

His companion in this journey was Thomas Mor- 
rill, who had been an officer in the Revolutionary 
army, and who was long one of his most trusted help- 
ers as well as one of his most intimate friends. As- 
bury's custom was always to have a traveling com- 
panion, and his companion generally found that 
pleasant as it was to be in the bishop's company the 
price paid for the pleasure was not a small one. 

We noted in the last chapter the arrival in Charles- 
ton of the young Irishman, William Hammett, and 
his vain effort .to get the appointments of Parks and 
Ellis changed to secure the appointments for himself. 
Although Dr. Coke had brought him from the West 
Indies, he seems to have turned from him, much to 
Hammett's vexation. After failing in Philadelphia 
to get Asbury to change his decision, he came back 
to Charleston and established an independent 
church. This was the first schism in the societies 
Hammett was very popular with many of the Meth- 



138 Francis Asbuby. 

odists in Charleston, and with many who were 
friends, although not members, of society; and after 
he had preached in a hall for some time, they rallied 
to his help, and built him a neat, and, for the Meth- 
odists of that time, a handsome church, which he 
called Trinity. 

The disaffection reached the country round about, 
and in Georgetown he had another congregation. 
He was very popular for a short time, but only lived 
a few years. He was very bitter in his denunciation 
of Coke and Asbury, and never was reconciled to 
them or the connection. Lorenzo Dow, on a visit to 
Charleston some years after this, made an entry in 
his journal which was published, in which he said 
Eammett died drunk. Hammett's son sued Lorenzo 
for libel, and he was convicted and mildly punished 
for slandering the dead man. Some years after 
Hammett's death the church fell into the hands of 
the Asburyan Methodists, among whom it still re- 
mains. Asbury said Hammett charged the Amer- 
ican preachers with having insulted him, and said 
his name had been left off the minutes, and that the 
cautioning minute was against him. Asbury not 
only had trouble with Mr. Hammett, but some one 
else, who he thinks was Mr. S., wrote him an abu- 
sive, anonymous letter containing several charges; 
and Mr. Philip Matthews sent in his resignation as 
a traveling preacher and withdrew from the connec- 
tion. The year opened as the last had, in a storm, 
but the determined Asbury never stood aside for a 
moment. Immediately after the Conference closed 
be turned his face toward Georgia. There was trou- 
ble here, as there had been in Charleston. Beverly 
Allen had been a prominent figure in the history of 



Francis Asbuby. 139 

the early Church. He was energetic, gifted, and a 
man of good lineage, who had married into an excel- 
lent family in South Carolina. He had not worked 
in good accord with Asbury, who always distrusted 
him. He had become involved in serious trouble, 
and when Asbury, after a fatiguing journey, met the 
Conference at Washington, he had the painful task 
of pronouncing his expulsion. There was quite a 
sifting and searching, and others were involved in 
censure. When the Conference closed he took Har- 
dy Herbert and Hope Hull and began his journey 
toward the distant west. He aimed to reach Ken- 
tucky, and with his companions went through west- 
ern North Carolina directly to General Russell's in 
southwestern Virginia. The gateway t Kentucky 
was by the route traveled before through Cumber- 
land Gap. It was a wild trail till he reached the first 
settlements at the Crab Orchard. The huts in which 
these first settlers lived were small and filthy, and a 
severe dysentery fastened upon him ; but he found in 
these wilds a little good claret wine, which set him 
up again, and he pressed on to their tliicker settle- 
ments. Kentucky was rapidly filling up, and the 
question of its status after its admission into the Un- 
ion was now being settled. Should it be a slave or a 
free state? Ten years before this, David Rice, a Vir- 
ginia Presbyterian, had come from Virginia with the 
first Virginian immigrants and established the first 
Presbyterian Church in Kentucky. He had also es- 
tablished a high school, and was a leading man in the 
territory. He was bitterly opposed to slavery, and 
had written a letter to the convention protesting 
against allowing it in Kentucky. This letter Asbury 
read with great pleasure, and while in Kentucky he 



140 Francis As bury. 

wrote a letter to Rice encouraging him and applaud- 
ing his course. Francis Poythress, who belonged to 
one of the oldest families in Virginia, who had been 
licensed to preach by Asbury, and who had been one 
of his trusted helpers, was now in charge of the Ken- 
tucky District. He had planned a high school, and 
five hundred acres of land had been given for its en- 
dowment. He was now trying to raise money for the 
buildings, and Asbury made the school a visit. No 
one at the present day can have any true idea of the 
difficulties encountered by those who projected and 
attempted to build houses for schools in these last 
days of the last century, and it is not to be wondered 
at that the effort of Poythress was not fully success- 
ful. The times were greatly disordered. The con- 
vention to form a constitution was to be called. The 
Indian tribes were in revolt. The Cherokees on the 
south and the Wyandots on the north were both on 
the warpath, and between all these excitements the 
little band that composed the Conference had a rath- 
er uneasy session. 

The session, however, was held; and new as the 
country was, Asbury preached to large crowds. De- 
spite all the hardships of the wilderness and the dan- 
gers from the Indians, the spirit of matrimony, he 
says, was very prevalent. In one circuit the preach- 
ers were all settled. This was a serious matter to 
one who wanted men on horseback. The land, he 
said, was good, the country new, there were all the 
facilities for family maintenance, and so the suscep 
tible preachers were drawn into the marriage net. 

He finished his work in Kentucky and started on 
the same route back toward Virginia. In passing 
through the mountains he came near the hostile sav- 



Francis As bury. 141 

ages; guards were posted, and he stood guard all 
night. He met the Holston Conference, and thence 
went back again to his old friend General Russell's. 

Although parts of eastern Virginia had been set- 
tled nearly two hundred years and the country was 
aged and worn, the western slope had only been oc- 
cupied by white people since just before the Revolu- 
tion. The beautiful valleys of Kentucky and of the 
Holston country, and even of what is now Middle 
Tennessee, were being rapidly populated, but the 
mountains of Virginia, in whose bosoms were hid the 
great treasures of coal and iron, were as they had 
stood for all the centuries. There was, however, a 
rich and narrow valley along the Kanawha, which 
was even then being occupied. The adventurous sur- 
veyor, George Washington, had explored these lands 
while he was a young man, and had preempted a 
large part of this almost matchless valley. 

Asbury left General Russell's and made his way 
northward through this valley, and thence rode the 
one hundred weary miles through almost unbroken 
forests to meet his few western preachers in the older 
settlements among the grass-clad hills of Greenbrier. 
With him labor and exposure were so common that 
his scant records give but a faint idea of the sacrifice 
their toils demanded; but let one acquainted with 
the topography of this western section follow him in 
his journeyings, and he will see something of the la- 
bor he must have undergone. His trip to Union- 
town, in Pennsylvania, where he met the western 
section of the Pennsylvania, Maryland, and western 
Virginia preachers, was by the same wearisome 
route of which we have already given account. He 
turned eastward, and now for the first time in weary 



142 Francis As bury. 

months found himself in the midst of comfort and re- 
finement. * He paused but a little while, and pressed 
on to New England to make his second visit. Here 
in Lynn, in a half -finished house, he held the second 
New England Conference. The contrast between the 
old civilization and the new Church was as marked 
in New England as the new settlements and the new 
Church in the far west. Old England had over one 
hundred and fifty years before almost transferred 
a part of herself to the section in which this little 
Conference now met. It might be said that this 
country was never new, and it was especially true 
that its religious features were fixed, and yet all the 
hardships of the frontier were found here in the 
midst of this old civilization. The visit to Lynn and 
the effort to provide preachers for the old east, while 
far less exciting than the journey to Kentucky, was 
scarcely less trying. 

The western part of New York was being rapidly 
peopled. New Englanders and those from the older 
parts of the state were pressing their way toward 
the lakes. Freeborn Garrettson had for six years 
been laboring in this section and had established 
Methodism permanently in it, and he and his sturdy 
corps of evangelists met Asbury in Albany. During 
this year Garrettson, the elegant Maryland gentle- 
man, married into the distinguished Livingston fam- 
ily ; and this marriage introduced Asbury into the old 
families of the Hudson, among whom he found kindly 
friends for many years after this. Although Meth- 
odism worked largely among the poor and unedu- 
cated both in England and America, she numbered 
among her truest friends and warmest supporters 
some from the most distinguished of its noble and 



Francis As bury. 143 

aristocratic families; and the Livingstons, Van Cort- 
lands, Carrolls, Ridgleys, Balis, Iiemberts, Grants, 
Meriwetliers, and many others, were not inferior in 
social position to any family in the land. 

During this tour Asbury was accompanied by Hope 
Hull, of whom we have spoken before, and he left the 
young Marylander in Hartford, where he spent a 
year. During this time he was the instrument in the 
conversion of a youth who became one of the most 
striking personages in the early part of the century. 
This was Lorenzo Dow. He was an ill-balanced but 
remarkably gifted Connecticut boy, who tried to be a 
traveling preacher in the regular connection, but who 
found the restraints of its discipline too great for 
him and became a free lance in theology, who 
preached from Maine to Mississippi, then the western 
frontier, and who for the first ten years of this centu- 
ry had perhaps a stronger hold on public attention 
than any other Methodist preacher on the continent. 

When the bishop reached New York City on his 
return, the warm-hearted Methodists of the society 
replenished his empty purse and provided him with a 
new wardrobe. This supplied his needs, and he com- 
placently says that this was better than £500 a year. 
It is evident that the good bishop, contrasting the 
position of the comfortably placed pastor of one of 
the rich churches of the east with the Methodist 
bishop and his f 80 a year, traveling from Maine to 
Georgia, was not disposed to discount the Methodist. 

Going from New York he stopped in Philadelphia 
where he found things in the Ebenezer church in a 
lively state. His description of the meeting gives us 
an insight into many of the meetings of those days: 
"The mobility then came in like the roaring of the 



144 Francis Asbury. 

sea. They had been alarmed the night before by 
a shout, which probably was one cause why the 
congregation was so large. Brother A. went to 
prayer; a person cried out; brother C. joined in; the 
wicked were collected to oppose. I felt the power of 
darkness was very strong. . . . This is a wick- 
ed, a horribly wicked city; for their unfaithfulness 
they will be smitten in anger for their sleepy silence 
in the house of God, which ought to resound with the 
voice of praise and frequent prayer; the Lord will 
visit their streets with the silence of desolation." 

He left Philadelphia for the eastern shore and 
made his annual tour, and then went w 7 ith a heavy 
heart to Baltimore. His heart was heavy because 
the General Conference was to meet. It is useless 
to deny the fact, Bishop Asbury did not wish the 
General Conference to assemble. He did not wish 
to be hampered. He thought he knew the necessity 
of the times and that he w r as master of the situation. 
While he cared not a jot for power, except as a means 
to do good, he believed every restriction put upon 
him would be to the injury of the work; but the An- 
nual Conferences had called the Conference, and 
now he went to meet it. 

The General Conference met November 1, 1792. It 
was simply a mass meeting of the traveling preach- 
ers. The Christmas Conference of 1784 had done 
little more than to legalize the suggestions of Dr. 
Coke, who brought over the service-book, and the 
regulations suggested by Mr. Wesley, and any 
legislation since that time had been done by the 
preachers acting through their District or Annual 
Conferences. Bishop Asbury, as we have said, did 
not wish a General Conference called; but Dr. Coke 



F BANC IS AS BURY. 145 

did, and he expressed the wish of the preachers. 
Bishop Asbury expected what was the fact, that 
there would be a complete revision of the Discipline, 
and feared that there would be sundry very unpleas- 
ant alterations. He says, October 31st: "Came to 
Baltimore in a storm of rain. Whilst we were sit- 
ting in the room at Mr. Ross's in came Dr. Coke, of 
whose arrival I had not heard and whom .we em- 
braced with great love. I felt awful at the General 
Conference which began November 1, 1792. At my 
desire they appointed a moderator and preparatory 
committee to keep order and bring forward the busi- 
ness with regularity. We had heavy debates on the 
first, second, and third sections of our form of dis- 
cipline. My power to station the preachers without 
an appeal was much debated, but finally carried by a 
large majority. Perhaps a new bishop, new Confer- 
ence, and new laws would have better pleased some." 
The bishop was not well, and after sitting with 
the Conference a week he went to bed, and wrote to 
the body the letter which is found below. The real 
ground of conflict was as to the power to be allowed 
him. Should the American preachers have the lib- 
erty of the English connection, and should one dis- 
satisfied with his appointment be allowed to appeal 
to the Conference and ask for a change? James 
O'Kelly led those who asked for this privilege. 
He was seconded by strong men who had been 
closely connected with Asbury, and were much at- 
tached to him personally. Among them were Rich- 
ard Ivey, Hope Hull, and Freeborn Garrettson. 
Their devotion to the Church could not be ques- 
tioned, and their ability was conceded; but opposed 
to them were men of equal ability, and some of these 
10 



146 Francis Asbury. 

were not favorites with Asbury, nor was he in high 
favor with them. Jesse Lee, who in after years was 
a leader of the liberals, stood by Asbury in this con- 
test, and did as much to defeat O'Kelly as any one of 
the body. While the matter was being discussed, 
Asbury withdrew and wrote the following letter: 

My Dear Brethren: Let my absence give you no pain. Dr. 
Coke presides. I am happily excused from assisti- g to make 
laws by which I myself am to be governed. I have only to 
obey and execute. I am happy in the consideration that I 
have never stationed a preacher through enmity or as a pun- 
ishment. I have acted for the glory of God, the good of the 
people, and to promote the usefulness of the preachers. Are 
you sure that if you please yourselves the people will be as 
fully satisfied ? They often say, " Let us have such a preach- 
er;" and sometimes, "We will not have such a preacher; 
we will sooner pay him to stay at home." Perhaps, I must 
say, his appeal forced him upon you. I am one, you are 
many; I am as willing to serve you as ever. I want not to 
sit in any man's way; I scorn to solicit your votes; I am a 
very trembling poor creature to hear praise or dispraise. 
Speak your minds freely, but remember you are only making 
laws for the present time. It may be that, as in some other 
things, so in this, a future day may give you further light. 

The Conference refused to make the change asked 
for, and O'Kelly, disappointed and angered, gath- 
ered up his saddlebags and, with some of those as- 
sociated with him, withdrew from the Conference 
room and returned to his home in Virginia. The 
Conference was anxious to conciliate him, but he 
was not willing to be reconciled, and after a few 
months of silence he withdrew entirely from the con- 
nection and formed the Republican Methodists. He 
was in after times very bitter toward his old asso- 
ciate; but they met when O'Kelly was on his death- 
bed, and Asbury prayed for him and with him, and 



Francis As bury. 147 

they parted to meet no more on earth. The positive 
old Irishman had been too long in control of things 
in his section to submit to another's dictation, and a 
separation between the two was inevitable. There 
was, however, nothing in Q'Kelly's motives which 
seems to have been censurable. He really thought 
the arbitrary course which a bishop might take ought 
to be anticipated and provided against, but Asbury 
could not see any danger from that direction. 

As Asbury came southward after the General Con- 
ference adjourned, he found the leaven at work, and 
Rice Haggard and William McKendree both with- 
drew from the connection. McKendree afterwards 
returned, and when he was a bishop stood as firmly 
for the episcopal prerogative as he had opposed it in 
Baltimore; and no man wns ever nearer to Asbury 
than he was in after days. 

Bishop Asbury rode through central Xorth Caro- 
lina to Rembert Hall, in South Carolina. Col. James 
Rembert, a wealthy slave owner who lived on Black 
River, was one of the wealthiest and most pious men 
of his section. Rembert Hall was on Asbury's route 
to Charleston, and once a year he found shelter there. 
After a brief stay the bishop went on to Charleston, 
and found that the eloquent Hammeit had raised a 
grand house and written an appeal to the British 
Conference, in which he said some very hard things 
of Dr. Coke, and doubtless of Asbury. As soon as 
Conference was over, he made his journey to Geor- 
gia. He found a resting place at Thomas Haynes's. 
Haynes was one of those sturdy Virginians who set- 
tled in Georgia, and whose life was devoted to the 
building up of the Methodist Church, and whose dis- 
tinguished family has done so much for it. 



148 Francis Asbury. 

The Conference met at Grant's, and it was decided 
to unite the South Carolina and Georgia Confer- 
ences, or districts as they were then called, and 
thenceforth they were known as the South Carolina 
Conference, until the division again nearly forty 
years afterwards. 

Mr. Asbury now resolved to take a tour through 
the older settled parts of Georgia and South Caro- 
lina. He rode through the pine woods, and over the 
sand beds through Warren, Burke, Screven, and Ef 
flngham counties, to Savannah. The settlers alona' 
the way were few, and he says the time between 
meals was long. He stopped with an old friend who 
had received a letter from Mr. Philip Matthews, in 
which the charge was made by Mr. Hammett "that 
Mr. Wesley's absolute authority over the societies 
was not established in America because of Bishop 
Asbury's opposition." Bishop Asbury admits this, 
but says the "Americans were too jealous to bind 
themselves to yield to him in all things relative to 
Church government." 

The travelers reached Savannah, to which Hope 
Hull had been sent, but where no society had yet 
been formed. Bishop Asbury saw Whitefield's Or- 
phan House in ruins, and came by Ebenezer where 
the Salzburghers were then established. The court- 
house in Savannah was offered him, but he preached 
at Mr. M.'s. This was doubtless at Mr. Millen's, a 
good Presbyterian who always befriended the strug- 
gling Methodists. Mr. Asbury supposed Savannah 
had then two thousand people in it. There was an 
Independent, an Episcopal, a Baptist, and a Luther- 
an church there. He crossed the Savannah Biver 
at Sister's ferry, in Effingham county, preached at 



Francis Asbuey. 149 

Black Swamp, and rode to Purysburg, and from 
thence, along what is now the Charleston and Sa- 
vannah railroad, to Charleston. Much of the coun- 
try was an unbroken pine wood, though along the 
rivers there were occasional rice plantations. This 
journey took him over much the same country which 
Mr. Wesley had traveled, on foot, when he left Sa- 
vannah the last time. After a wearisome travel he 
reached Charleston. At this time the congregation 
there consisted of five hundred, of whom two hun- 
dred were whites. In no city in the United States 
has the Methodist Church suffered so much from in- 
testine troubles as in Charleston, and the progress 
made in spite of Mr. Hammett's division was really 
remarkable. The bishop expected to remain in 
Charleston a little while, but a sick friend came from 
the north who needed the country air, and he hurried 
away. 

For nearly a hundred miles from Charleston, in ev 
ery direction, there are swamps and rivers, and his 
journal of travel is little more than a wearisome ac- 
count of rivers ferried or creeks swum. He reached 
the newly-established capital of South Carolina, Co- 
lumbia, and then through the high waters made his 
way toward North Carolina. 

His rule was to have appointments to preach at ev- 
ery place where he stopped. He rose in the morning 
at four o'clock, read his Bible and prayed till six, and 
as soon as breakfast could be had he began his trav- 
el again. The country was comparatively new and 
was being rapidly peopled, chiefly by emigrants from 
Virginia and Maryland. He kept the question of 
where a new preacher should be sent continually be- 
fore him, and kept watch for the preacher. He 



150 Francis Asbuby. 

went into the question of where the preachers should 
be stationed with a perfect acquaintance with the 
work. 

He was untiring, and though feeble, worn, and 
often really sick, he did not spare himself, but 
pressed on his way. His life story is almost a mo- 
notonous one, for days but repeat themselves, and 
they all tell the same story. Despite the fatigue of 
travel, he was not neglectful of his books. He car- 
ried a few with him, and during his long rides he 
read and studied. His Hebrew Bible was his con- 
stant companion, and while he was making his jour- 
ney through the hills of upper South Carolina he was 
studying Hebrew points and planning a new school. 

He was making his way to the Holston country, 
and traveled through the mountains of North Caro- 
lina, going his most direct route to General Bussell's, 
in southwest Virginia. The western part of North 
Carolina was then a comparatively new country, and 
was largely peopled by settlers from Germany and 
Ireland, or their immediate descendants. There 
were few comforts to be found on any line of travel, 
and very few indeed on the rough mountain trail he 
and his companions pursued. They were glad to 
get a few Irish potatoes, some flax for bedding, and 
a few boards to shelter them. The bishop, however, 
made the journey safely, preaching as he went, and 
after crossing the Watauga Eiver and climbing the 
Stone and Iron mountains, and descending that steep 
side where it was impossible to ride, and where his 
rheumatism made it very painful to go on foot, he 
finally reached the hospitable home of his good old 
friend Madam Eussell. This excellent woman was 
a second time a widow. 



Francis As bury. 151 

General Russell, the brave old soldier, who had 
become in later life a happy, useful Christian, had 
gone to his reward. Asbury preached at the home 
of the widow, and there followed several exhorta- 
tions. They were five hours in the exercise, and 
there was shouting and weeping among the people. 
No wonder he adds: "I have little rest by day or 
night; Lord, help thy poor dust." "I feel unexpect- 
ed storms from various quarters. Perhaps it is de- 
signed for my humiliation. It is sin in thought 1 
am afraid of; none but Jesus can supply us, by his 
merit, his spirit, his righteousness, his intercession.'' 

He made his way again to Rehoboth, in Monroe 
county, Virginia, w T here he met the preachers of 
southwest Virginia, and then through the w r ild Al- 
leghanies one hundred miles to the then small but 
lively village of Staunton. There was an Episcopal 
church, a courthouse, a tavern, and some good 
stores. Then down the valley to Winchester, where 
"we had an excellent new house," and then to his 
rest at wicked Bath. 

After recruiting, he crossed the mountains of east- 
ern Pennsylvania and upper New Jersey and went 
up the Hudson to Albany. The people of Albany, he 
says, "roll in wealth, but they had no heart to ask 
the poor preachers to their homes." 

Although it was but the middle of the year, this 
indefatigable man had gone from Charleston, South 
Carolina, through the wildest mountains of the Al- 
leghany range, to Connecticut. 

Methodism had come to New England to stay, and 
the Conference was to meet at Tolland. With a blis- 
ter behind his ear for a sore throat and a poultice on 
his foot for rheumatism, he consented to rest a little 



152 Francis Asbury. 

while, but only for two days. He was again at- 
tacked by the rheumatism, and was not able to walk 
from his horse to the house, and had to be lifted 
down from the saddle and up again. 

On his way back, when he came near Whitehall, 
in New York, his horse started and threw him into 
a mill race, and his shoulder was hurt by the fall. 
He stopped at a house, changed his wet clothes, and 
prayed with the people. "If any of these people are 
awakened by my stopping here/' says he, "all will 
be well." 

The calamity he had predicted the year before had 
fallen on Philadelphia — the yellow fever was there, 
and there was silence in the streets. It was almost 
recklessness that would lead one to go into the 
plague-stricken town, but he never turned his horse's 
head. He rode at once- into the midst of the pesti- 
lence, delivered his message, and then went on his 
way. He had spent nearly three weeks in the midst 
of the sickness, and then made his annual visit to the 
eastern shore. He attended the last Conference of 
the year, at Baltimore. Here he raised a collection 
for the distressed preachers which amounted to £43. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

1794. 

Southern Tour — Great Exposure — William McKendree — Tour 
to the North — Southward Again — The College — R. R, 
Roberts. 

np HE Conference sessions began with the later 
JL fall months, so after leaving Baltimore the 
bishop made his way into Virginia and passed rap- 
idly through the center of the state, going as far west 
as Prince Edward, returning eastward, and leaving 
the state from Brunswick county. He found that 
the O'Kelly trouble had not been so serious as he 
feared. McKendree, finding he had been misled, re- 
turned to the old fold, and was going on with him 
to the south. He again passed through the eastern 
part of North Carolina, met the Conference again at 
Green HilTs, and feeble and worn he came to Broad 
River in South Carolina, where the South Carolina 
Conference was to have its session. Philip Bruce, 
presiding elder, was very sick, and so was the bishop, 
but he managed to go through with the work, and on 
the 20th of January reached Charleston, where he 
had time to rest. It is a positive relief to the reader 
to know that for thirty days the earnest and afflicted 
man was as still as lie could be. Dr. Ramsay, the 
first of our historians, whose histories of South Car- 
olina and of the Revolution are so eagerly sought for, 
attended him; but though Asbury was willing to be 
blistered and to take nauseous doses, he was not will- 
ing to do the most important thing he could do — to 
rest. He read, he visited, he preached, while he was 

(153) 



154 Francis As bury. 

here. Poor Beverly Allen, who had gone from bad 
to worse, killed the United States marshal in Au- 
gusta and fled to the wilderness of Kentucky. Allen 
had done the bishop much harm by his misrepresen- 
tations, and Asbury had always distrusted him, but 
now his sad fate affected him painfully. The bish- 
op's stay in Charleston at this time was the longest 
stop he had made in many months; but he was eager 
to get to work again, and as soon as he could safely 
do so he w 7 as on his way to Rembert's. The country 
through w T hich he rode was a peculiar one — along 
the river affected by the tide sufficiently to make the 
water available for flooding the fields were magnifi- 
cent rice plantations, worked by large gangs of 
slaves, and then came wide stretches of uncultivated 
pine forests. He says, after riding twenty -seven 
miles without eating: "How good were the potatoes 
and fried gammon! We then had only two miles 
to brother Rembert's, where we arrived at seven 
o'clock. What blanks are in this country, and how 
much worse are the rice plantations! If a man-of- 
war is a floating hell, these are standing ones: wick- 
ed mothers, overseers, and negroes, cursing, drink 
ing, no Sabbath, no sermons. 5 ' 

He had said little on the subject of slavery for 
some time. He had found that the greatest success 
won by Methodists had been among slave owners; 
so that one might have thought that he was satisfied 
that his views were too extreme, or that other mat- 
ters seemed to him to be more important than eman- 
cipation. He, however, says now: "Some are afraid 
that if we retain among us none who trade in slaves, 
the preachers will not be supported; but my fear is, 
we shall not be able to supply the state with preach- 



Francis As bury. 155 

ers." He left the hospitable home of Colonel Rem- 
bert for a journey northward. Passing through the 
Waxhaws, where Andrew Jackson was born, he 
made his way into North Carolina, as he says, 
through discouraging prospects. He came through 
Charlotte, in Mecklenburg, where the Scothch-Irish 
had their large settlement, and with Tobias Gibson 
for a companion went into the Dutch settlement on 
the Cataw r ba. This he found a barren place for re- 
ligion. In attempting to cross the Cataw r ba he near- 
ly lost his life by getting into the wrong ford. There 
was rain, rain, and only when he reached dear old 
father Harper's after midnight, having been w T et for 
six or seven hours, did . j find shelter. The next day 
he was off again. 

"It has been a heavy campaign," he said, "but my 
soul enjoys peace; buf oh, for men of God! This 
campaign has made me groan, being burdened. I 
have provided brother Gibson, for the westward. I 
wrote a plan for stationing. I desired the dear 
preachers to be as I am in the w 7 ork. I have no in- 
terest, no passions in the appointments; my only aim 
is to care for the flock of Christ. I feel resolved to 
be w r holly for the Lord, w r eak as I am. I have done 
nothing, I am nothing, only for Christ, or I had been 
long since cut off as an unfaithful servant. Christ 
is all and in all I do, or it had not been done, or when 
done had by no means been acceptable." He did not 
spare himself; he did not spare anyone else, and 
complains that McKendree had not visited this ob- 
scure part of North Carolina in w 7 hich he was, and 
adds: "If I could think myself of any account, I 
might say with Mr. Wesley, 'If it be so while I am 
alive, what will it be after mv death?' " 



156 Francis As bury. 

No man ever lived who did not make a real merit 
of self-sacrifice, who had less disposition to spare 
himself hardships than Bishop Asbury. Living- 
stone inspired by his dream of mapping out Africa 
and destroying the slave trade, Francis Xavier in 
his zeal for the conversion of India to the Catholic 
faith, or Las Casas in his devotion to the Indians, 
were not more untiring in toil nor daring in exposure 
than was this heroic man. 

One sometimes pauses to ask, "Was this martyr- 
dom ?" for martyrdom it was — a needless sacrifice; 
or, "Was it a demand that had to be met?" When 
one studies the history of those times, the rapid 
movement of population westward, the influence of 
the wild environments upon character, the need for 
quick, energetic, discreet action, and sees how the 
heroic spirit of this man made the heroes that the 
day demanded, he cannot but feel that there was 
nothing morbid in the anxiety of Asbury to make 
every sacrifice that the work might be imshed for- 
ward. That he might have overestimated his per- 
sonal importance was but natural; and that he 
should have exacted too much of others, would likely 
have followed from his own entire disregard of ev- 
erything like personal ease, when he thought duty 
to the work was involved. 

William McKendree, to whom Asbury evidently 
refers under the initials, W. M., and who was after- 
wards to be his trusted lieutenant, and to do more 
for Methodism than any other man of his day, save 
Asbury himself, was now on the Union Circuit, in 
South Carolina. In those days circuits had no defi- 
nite boundaries, and McKendree's parish stretched 
from middle South Carolina away toward the Hoi- 



Francis Asbury. 157 

ston country. McKendree had been a preacher now 
for seven years. He stood by O'Kelly in his contest 
with Asbury, and when O'Kelly withdrew he with- 
drew also; but he afterwards changed his opinion, 
and accepted the decision of the Conference as a wise 
one, and thirty years afterwards the same question, 
in another form, found him occupying the place that 
Asbury occupied in 1792. 

The side lights which Asbury in his journal cast " 
on times which many have looked upon as the golden 
days of Methodism are important. He was very 
happy, he says, while riding along toward Dr. Brow- 
er's; on his way he saw Babel, the Baptist-Methodist 
house, "about which there had been so much quarrel- 
ing. It was made of logs, and is no great matter. " 
And again he sa} T s: "I am astonished at professors 
neglecting family and private prayer. Lord, help; 
for there is little genuine religion in the world." 

On his way, in Surrey county, North Carolina, he 
found some old disciples from Maryland, Virginia, 
and Delaware. He found also a schoolhouse twenty 
feet square, two stories high, well set out with doors 
and windows, on a beautiful eminence overlooking 
the Yadkin, and known as Cokesbury School. This 
school was located in the bounds of what is now the 
Farmington Circuit, in the Western North Carolina 
Conference. He rode now to Salem, w T here the Mo- 
ravians had a village, and thence through Guilford 
into Pittsylvania county, Virginia, and north by his 
old route through central Virginia. Going along 
the foothills of the Blue Eidge, he preached in the 
courthouse at Liberty, the county site of Bedford; 
but he did not find freedom to eat bread and drink 
water in the little village where there is now the 



158 Francis Asbury. 

magnificent Randolph - Macon Academy. His soul 
was in peace and perfect love, he says, and he pro- 
posed to preach present conviction, conversion, and 
sanctification. "I might do many things better than 
I do," he says, "but this I do not discover till after- 
wards." 

He went over the hills into Rockbridge, Virginia, 
preached at Lexington, and at length reached Win- 
chester, where, sick and weary, he found a resting- 
place at R. Harrison's, and gargled his poor throat 
with rose-leaf water and spirits of vitriol. Perhaps 
if the gargle had been substituted by rest, and he had 
felt it less a duty to make a loud noise in preaching, 
his throat might have recruited sooner. Though 
his throat was sore and his ear inflamed, and he had 
a chill and high fever, he attended Conference and 
preached, and then went on his way to brother 
Phelps's, in northern Virginia. The people came 
from every side to hear him; and though sick and 
weary, he took his staff and climbed the hill, and 
did his best. 

He came again to Baltimore, where, as the people 
would have it, he consented to have his likeness 
taken. This is the portrait of him so commonly seen, 
and was taken when he was forty-nine years old. 
He made his northward trip, and in Philadelphia he 
had a talk with Mr. Pilmoor about Mr. G., in which 
there was some question about his administration 
of affairs. Brother Asbury stated his position: (1) 
He did not make rules, but had to execute them. 
(2) That anyone who desired him to act in disregard 
of these law 7 s either insulted him as an individual or 
the Conference as a body of men. These two prin- 
ciples controlled him. Believing fully that he w r as 



Francis Asbury. 159 

divinely called to the office and work of a bishop, 
yet unlike Mr. Wesley, who made the rules others 
were not to mend, he made no rules, but left his 
brethren to do that, and merely kept those made for 
him. 

He came as far north as Providence, Rhode Island, 
but had no freedom to eat bread and drink water in 
that place. He found a good prospect at New Lon- 
don, and passed from thence through the Valley 
of the Connecticut. R. R. Roberts, afterwards the 
bishop, traveled with him on this tour and assisted 
him in his w r ork. He could find but little of w r hat 
he thought religion in this section. The Conference 
met on September 5th, and they went through with 
the business. On Sunday they spent from eight 
to nine in prayer; a sermon, three exhortations, and 
the sacrament followed. They were engaged in the 
service till three o'clock in the afternoon, and he 
broke his fast at seven. Then he came southward, 
attending Conference in New York and Philadel- 
phia, and rode to Cokesbury. The college was in 
debt £1,200, and £300 ought to be paid at once. 
Thence he came to the Virginia Conference, which 
met at Mabry's, in Brunswick. The Conference had 
decided that extreme measures against slavehold- 
ing, as far as the laity was concerned, were not now 
wise; but that as far as the preachers were con- 
cerned, they should not remain in the traveling con- 
nection and hold slaves. After the Conference was 
over he began his usual journey southward. When 
he left Mrs. Mabry's, where he held Conference, he 
continued his journey, through rain and snow and 
cold, to Charleston once more. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

1795. 

Episcopal Journeyings — Death of Judge White — The Ennalls 
Family — Governor Van Cortlandt — Return South. 

THE bishop remained in Charleston several weeks 
trying to recruit his strength. He preached, 
visited the people, and met the classes. The mob 
was very violent, breaking the church windows, dis- 
turbing the congregation while at service, and sneer 
ing at the preacher on the streets. He read diligent- 
ly, and read Wesley's Journal, Flavel on Keeping the 
Heart, and the History of the French Revolution, 
but he was impatient to be gone. He, however, 
spent two months in the city, and labored as best he 
could. He says he -" was very much dejected the 
while, and worldly people are intolerably ignorant 
of God. Playing, dancing, swearing, racing — these 
are their common practices and pursuits. Our few 
male members do not attend preaching, and I fear 
there is hardly one who walks with God. Oh, how 
I should prize a quiet retreat in the woods!'' 

He now went to the northwestern part of South 
Carolina, where he was trying to collect one hundred 
pounds to finish Bethel school. He says that on 
this journey he met the negroes apart from the 
whites, and said "for obvious reasons it was the only 
way in which to meet them." He ordained a deacon 
and married the deacon's daughter to a husband, 
and it was all he could do, he said, to keep the 
wedding company serious. Then he rode northward 
(160) 



Francis As bury. 161 

through western Xorth Carolina, to Ernest's, on the 
Noiachucky, in Tennessee, where he met the Hoiston 
Conference, thence through the mountains of west- 
ern Virginia to Charlestown, and through Freder- 
ick, in Maryland, to his old friends, the Warfields, 
and on to Baltimore, and to Perry Hall. Then came 
to him the sad news of the death of one w:ho had been 
dearer to him than any other friend he had made in 
America, Thomas White, whose house had been his 
place of refuge when he was driven from Maryland. 
Judge White had lived a pure life, and died a happy 
death. Asbury was now fifty years old, and was as 
dead to the world as though he had not been in it. 
He says: "I feel happy in speaking to all I find, 
whether parents, children, or servants, and I see no 
other w r ay; common means will not do." While on 
this visit he made arrangements to build in Balti- 
more the first church for negroes in that city, and, I 
think, the first in the United States. 

He was very low in health and still, he says, under 
awful depression. "I am not conscious, " he says, 
"of any sin, even in thought, but the imprudence and 
unfaithfulness of some bear heavily on my heart." 

He made a visit to the eastern shore to his friends, 
the Ennalls, in Dorchester, and then passed through 
Delaware to Philadelphia. On his way he called on 
the good sister Withey, " who kept the best inn on the 
continent, and who had entertained him w T hen he 
made his first journey southward;" and one is sorry 
to hear that the good old sister was not well, and in 
trouble. 

These little personal allusions show the tender na- 
ture of the fearless, strong-headed, and strong-willed 
man w T ho bore all the burden of the connection on his 
11 



162 Francis Asbury, 

heart. One of his entries is especially amusing in 
the light of the full information he has given us of 
his use of the many and various remedies for his 
often infirmities. He says: "I came to Elizabeth- 
town and found brother Morrel, who had been bled 
and physicked almost to death, on the road to re- 
covery." He now went through New York and into 
New England. Roberts was still with him, but part- 
ed from him when he entered Vermont, which he 
now for the first time visited. He preached at Ben- 
nington and went to Ash Grove, in New York, to 
which place the good Embury had removed from 
New York City, and in which he died. He was now 
in northern New York, and at Plattsburg he had a 
high day. As he descended the Hudson, he came 
to his brother Garrettson's at Rhinebeck. Garrett- 
son, by his marriage with Miss Livingston, had come 
into possession of a large property. He used it well, 
and never relaxed his ministerial efforts to the end 
of his useful life, twenty years after this. 

Governor Van Cortlandt, Asbury's early friend, 
lived near Garrettson, and he dined with him. On 
his return southward he passed through New Jersey, 
and when he heard of a fight in which the one party 
had his eye gouged out, and another had his nose and 
ear cut off, he concluded that Jersey was worse than 
New England, for at least they were civil there. 
The Conference met in Philadelphia, and remained 
in session a week. Asbury then came by Chester, 
where we are glad to find that his old friend, Mary 
Withey, had made an advantageous sale of her inn, 
and in three weeks was to give place to the pur- 
chaser. 

The Baltimore Conference, with its fifty - five 



Francis As bury. 163 

preachers, met on Tuesday and remained in session 
till Friday night. 

The Africans in whom he had taken such an inter- 
est, and whose new church he had helped forward, 
now asked greater privileges than white stewards or 
trustees ever had a right to ask. 

In his journal of this year he mentions, as far as I 
can find, the first bequest made to the Church by 
anyone in America. It was made by Stephen Da- 
vies, of Virginia, and Asbury w T as made his trustee. 
At Salem, in Brunswick, the Virginia Conference 
was held. After its close he made his way through 
North Carolina. On his journey, he says of one day's 
travel: "My feet were wet, my body cold, and my 
stomach empty, having had no dinner. I found a 
good fire, a warm bed, and a little medicine, each 
necessary in its place." "No people/' he says of the 
good North Carolinians, "make you more welcome to 
th ur homes." "After riding twenty miles, I preached 
at father V.'s. I felt strangely set at liberty, and 
was uncommonly happy." 

He says of Georgetown, South Carolina, that after 
ten years of circuit preaching they had done but lit- 
tle, but that if we could station a preacher there he 
still hoped for success. Brother Cannon had not la- 
bored in vain. There was now less dancing, and the 
playhouse was closed. He had brought with him 
from Virginia Benjamin Blanton, and he had him to 
preach, and "we had," he says, "a number of very 
modest and attentive hearers." He now reached 
Charleston, to be ready for the South Carolina Con- 
ference, which was to meet there. 

As he was traveling through Virginia where there 
was quite a number of Quakers, he found time to ad- 



164 Francis As bury. 

dress one of them in a plain, outspoken letter, which 
Strickland has given us in his " Pioneer Bishop." 
It very strikingly illustrates the character of the 
good bishop, and casts some light upon the histo- 
ry of the times. It was written, says Strickland, 
to a friend in Delaware : 

Newton, Va., Seventh Month, 1795. 

My Very Dear Friend: If I have a partiality for any people 
in the world except the Methodists, it is for the Quakers, so 
called. Their plainness of dress, their love of justice and 
truth, their friendship to each other, and the care they take 
of one another, render them worthy of praise. Would it not 
be of use for that society that makes it a point not to come 
near any others, whether good or bad, to try all means within 
themselves — would it not be well, thinkest thou, for them 
to sit every night and morning, and, if they find liberty, to go 
to prayer after reading a portion of God's word? As epistles 
are read from the Friends, would it not be well to introduce 
the reading of some portion of the Scriptures at public 
meetings? Would it not be well to have a congregation and 
a society, an outer and an inner court? In the former, let 
children and servants and unawakened people come; in the 
inward, let mourners in Zion come. 

The Presbyterians have reformed; the Episcopalians and 
the Methodists. Why should not the Friends? 

It was a dark time one hundred and fifty years back. We 
are near the edge of the wilderness. If this inward court or 
society were divided into small bands or classes, and to be 
called together weekly by men and women of the deepest ex- 
perience and appointed for that work, and asked about their 
souls and the dealings of God with them, and to join in 
prayer one or two or all of them that have freedom, I think 
the Lord would come upon them. I give this advice as the 
real friend of your souls, as there are hundreds and thousands 
that never have nor will come near others. These might get 
more religion if your people were to hear others; they might 
get properly awakened; and if you had close meetings for 
speaking, they would not leave you. You must not think 
that G. Fox and R. Barclay were the only men in the world. 



Francis As bury. 165 

I am sure there must be a reform if you could move it in 
quarterly and yearly meetings for family and society meet- 
ings, and adopt rules for these meetings. 

Would it be well, thinkest thou, to preach against covet- 
ousness? God has blessed Friends. They are a temperate, 
industrious, and frugal people. Tell them to feed the hun- 
gry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and always feel the spir- 
it of prayer at such times. Would it not be well to deliver a 
testimony at other places if Friends felt freedom, and allow 
others to come into their meetings without forbidding them ? 
Our houses are open to any that come in a Christian spirit. 

I wish Methodists and Friends would be a stronger testi- 
mony against races, fairs, plays, and balls. I wish they 
would reprove swearing, lying, and foolish talking; watch 
their young people in their companies, instruct them in the 
doctrines of the Church, call upon them to feel after the 
spirit of prayer morning and evening, and strive to bring 
them to God. If I know my own heart, I write from love to 
souls; and although it is the general cry, "You can do noth- 
ing with these people," I wish to lay before you these things, 
which I think are contrary to the ancient principles of 
Friends, and I am sure that we are taught them in the word 
of God. Think upon them. My soul pities and loves you. 
You may fight against God in not inculcating these things. 

I am, with real friendship to thee and thy people, 

Francis Asbttry. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

1796. 

South Carolina — Georgia — North Carolina — Tennessee — Vir- 
ginia — Views of Education — Bridal Party in the Mountains 
— Methodism in Brooklyn— Southward Again — Francis Acuff. 

THE Conference met in Charleston in January, 
1796, and Asbury rested here longer than any 
time in his journeyings. He was virtually a pastor 
of the little flock, and paid great attention to the 
blacks, who composed so large a part of it. He met 
the slaves in the kitchen of Mr. Wells and in the 
church, where he had often two hundred and fifty in 
love feast. He had few social qualities, and what 
time he did not spend in regular pastoral work he 
spent in reading. All well acquainted with Ameri- 
can history know that Washington at this time was 
not popular with many of the American people, 
who thought he leaned too much to the English and 
the aristocracy. This incensed the sturdy bishop, 
who expressed a somewhat burning indignation at 
those who detracted from one he so highly esteemed. 
As usual, when he was sedentary and spent much 
time in retrospection, he was despondent, as he says: 
"For my unholiness and unfaithfulness my soul is 
humbled. Were I to stand on my own merit, where 
should I go but to hell?" 

After a month in Charleston, he started to Angus 

ta. The country through which he rode was very 

flat, and it had been a season of heavy rains. The 

creeks and rivers were full, and his feet were contin- 

(166) 



Francis As bury. 167 

ually wet. But despite his wet feet, and despite the 
severity of the weather, he preached in an open house 
as he was on his way, and administered the sacra 
ment. He reached Augusta, and found that one of 
those occasional floods which mark the Savannah 
had inundated the streets. He said if they woulil 
know his just view they w T ould mob him, for he be 
lieved it an "African flood, sent on them because of 
slavery." He rode through a few of the upper east- 
ern counties of Georgia and reentered South Caro- 
lina. Here he was concerned about a free school, 
called Bethel, out of which Cokesbury came, and 
afterwards Wofford College. Dr. Bangs, who was a 
great admirer of Asbury, says that one of the errors 
of his life was his failure to value education. I can- 
not think this stricture is just. He planned schools 
over the whole connection. There were Ebenezer in 
Virginia, Cokesbury in Maryland, Bethel in Ken- 
tucky, Bethel in South Carolina, Cokesbury in North 
Carolina, and Wesley and Whitefield in Georgia. If 
these enterprises failed, as they did, largely, it was 
not for his want of interest, but experience taught 
him that there were some things he could not do, 
and he wisely left the local Conferences to provide 
for their own needs. Passing out of South Carolina, 
he entered the mountains of western North Carolina. 
The rides were long, and homes w 7 ere few r , and he 
mentions a dinner of dried peach pies that he and his 
companions made in the w 7 oods. The society in that 
section was rude, and he writes of a jolly bridal party 
he met, with their flag, a white handkerchief, flying 
as they dashed by him and paused at a distillery to 
fill up with new r -made apple brandy. He was soon in 
Tennessee, at AcufFs Chapel, built by Francis Acuff, 



168 Francis As bury. 

who was first a fiddler, then a Christian, then a 
preacher, and then, he trusts, a glorified saint. The 
journey was much the same as he had made several 
times before, leading him through the mountains 
of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia. 
Sometimes he rode for forty miles without finding a 
place to break his fast. A very fatiguing journey 
was made through Greenbrier and northwest Vir- 
ginia into Pennsylvania; the Conference met at 
Uniontown, and then through western Maryland he 
came to Cokesbury, where he beheld the ruins of 
the building which had cost him so much anxiety 
and toil. For nearly twelve years it had been an un- 
ceasing care to him, and it is not likely that he wept 
scalding tears over the death of the feeble invalid. 
It was now the midst of summer, and he hurried 
through the heat northward. 

When he reached New York, he spent some days 
in visiting chapels, and preached in the village of 
Brooklyn, w T here the Methodists were trying to get 
a foothold. The General Conference of 1796 met in 
October. The presiding elder matter was not any 
more agreeable than it had been at the first, and 
there was a stroke at it as there was afterwards for 
many years, but it came to naught. The deter- 
mined man had his will in this matter as in most 
others, but not without a contest. He came from 
Baltimore southward through the coast counties of 
Virginia, North and South Carolina, and held a meet- 
ing at New Berne, North Carolina, on his way to 
Charleston. He predicted future greatness for the 
young seaport, and was much pleased at the kind- 
ness he received from the people. There was little 
of incident in his journey to Charleston, but when 



Francis As bury. i69 

he reached the city he heard the stunning news that 
the new church in Baltimore and the new college 
just built near by were burned, and a loss of twenty 
thousand dollars had fallen on the society and the 
Church. No wonder, with the burning of two col- 
leges and the failure of another, the good bishop 
should have felt that he was not called to build them, 
and retired forever from the business of doing so. 
He had met every appointment during the year, and 
had traveled from Charleston to Boston and from 
the Atlantic coast to the mountains of Kentucky. 
It had been a year of excessive exposure and toil. 
The story of his journeys is, after all, the chief story 
of his laborious life, and one must refer to his homely 
but invaluable journal to get a true insight into the 
social and religious history of America at that time. 
No man of his day traveled so much, or so minutely 
tells what he saw of the people, but one who looks 
for startling or even striking incident in his story 
will be disappointed. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

1797, 

Charleston — Sickness — Northward Journey — Breaks Down in 
Kentucky — Eeaches Baltimore — Goes on His Tour North- 
ward — Jesse Lee — Returns South — Gives Up at Brunswick, 
Virginia, and Retires for the Winter. 

SINGE Mr. Asbury's election to the bishopric, 
while never very well, he had been able to do 
all the heavy work demanded of him; but he was now 
(in 1797) attacked by a long-protracted and severe 
intermittent fever, which came near ending his life. 
He had reached Charleston, January, 1797, in com- 
pany with Dr. Coke, in his usual health. The winter 
was very severe, and he was much exposed. His old 
friend Edgar Wells, who had done so much for the 
church in Charleston, was very ill, and died not long 
after Asbury reached the city. Asbury attended his 
funeral service and paid his tribute to the good man's 
memory, and then was himself attacked, as he had 
been in Maryland years before, with a severe and 
persistent intermittent fever. He was kindly attend- 
ed by Dr. David Ramsay, the famous historian, 
and as skillfully treated as the science of that day 
permitted. He would take the nauseous remedies 
prescribed, and get out of bed and work till his chill 
came on and the fever followed. He tried to meet 
the negroes every morning at six o'clock for morning 
prayer, and preached as often as he could. He 
planned the erection of another house in another 
part of the city, and put the matter in such shape 
(170) 



Francis Asbury. 171 

that Bethel church was the outcome. He was anx- 
ious to get away from Charleston. The Holston and 
Kentucky work seemed to demand his presence, and 
he was impatient at confinement in the city. Late in 
February, somewhat better in health, he turned his 
face toward the northwest. He was delighted to be 
in the woods once more. The southern spring was 
in its glory. The white dogwood, the golden jas- 
mine, the red bud, the earliest of the flowering forest, 
were in bloom. He hailed them with the delight of 
an escaped captive. He said he came to a gentle- 
man's house and found them playing cards. He 
asked for dinner, but said blunt Frank Asbury could 
not dine on cards; whereupon they politely put them 
aside. On his w T ay to Rembert's his feet were 
steeped as he swam the creeks, but he seems not then 
to have experienced the ill effects of his exposure. 
Leaving Camden, he turned his course northwest- 
wardly, aiming at the part of East Tennessee in 
which the Holston Conference was to meet. After 
he left Iredell Courthouse (now Statesville), in west- 
ern North Carolina, he found himself in the rugged 
mountains, in the severe weather of early March. 
The exposure was very great. The weather was 
stormy, the streams were dangerous, the ascent of 
the mountains was made with great difficulty and 
the descent with greater. He had an inflamed limb; 
he was crippled with rheumatism; it was impossible 
for him to walk, and dangerous to ride. There were 
very poor accommodations for man or beast, and he 
was really a very sick man. He pressed on, how- 
ever, to the seat of the Holston Conference and held 
the session. He intended to go on to Kentucky, but 
his brethren insisted that he should not attempt it; 



172 Francis As bury. 

and reluctantly, after sending Kobler to take his 
place there, he decided to try to reach Baltimore. 
He and his companions began their weary journey 
eastward. The fever returned and held him thirty 
hours. After a ride of forty miles, he reached the 
hospitable home of his lifelong friend, Madam Rus- 
sell. One could not but hope that the sick and 
weary man would have rested here; but he preached 
the day after he came, and only remained two days, 
and then began his journey again. He found good 
homes along the way, and although he could make 
but slow progress, yet by riding ten and fifteen miles 
a day he managed to make the journey. His diet, he 
said, was tea, potatoes, gruel, and chicken broth; 
but in two months' time he had gone over the moun- 
tains and through the valleys to Baltimore. At the 
home of brother Hawkins, a mile from the city, he 
found a resting place. 

His old friends in Maryland, rich and poor, crowded 
around him ministering to his comfort in every way 
in their power. He rode out every day, led a prayer 
meeting when he could, preached a few short ser- 
mons, and visited his old friends. The Goughs sent 
their chariot for him to come to Perry Hall, and he 
went and spoke freely about his soul to his old friend, 
who seems to have backslidden. He talked to the 
negro servants, wrote a few letters, and was able 
on Sunday to preach at Gough's. Mr. Gough now 
detailed a negro servant to go with him to Mr. Sher- 
idan's in Cecil county, and he sent another with him 
to Wilmington, and from thence he went in his sulky 
to Philadelphia. He could not be idle, but all ex- 
ertion threw him back. He, however, managed to 
get to the widow Sherwood's in New York; and find- 



Francis Asbuuy. 173 

ing himself swelling in the face, bowels, and feet, he 
applied leaves of burdock and drew a desperate blis- 
ter with a mustard plaster. He had such very sore 
feet that only after tw r o weeks was he able to set 
them on the ground. He was confined for two weeks, 
when he made the effort to reach Wilbraham, Massa- 
chusetts; but he was not able to make the journey, 
and Joshua Wells went on for him while he recruited 
at the widow Sherwood's. He said he could write a 
little, but for two months he had not preached. He 
grew r despondent, and complains gently that he is 
left too much alone. " Lord, help me," he says; "I am 
poor and needy. The hand of God hath touched me." 
A few days after this season of depression his sky 
was brighter. "The clouds," he says "are dispelled 
from my mind. Oh, that my future life may be holi- 
ness to the Lord! I washed to speak to a poor Af- 
rican w 7 hom I saw in the field. I went out, and as I 
came along on my return he was at a stone wall, 
eight or ten feet of me. Poor creature ! He seemed 
struck at my counsel, and gave me thanks. Oh, it 
was going down into the Egypt of South Carolina 
after these poor souls of Africans, and I have lost my 
health, if not my life, in the end. The will of the 
Lord be done." The members of this good family 
were especially kind to him, and he mentions them 
by name. Mamma, Betsey, Jonathan, and Bishop 
deserve to be held in lasting memory for their great 
kindness to the suffering apostle. 

He detailed Jesse Lee to travel with him, and to- 
gether they began their journey southward. He w r as 
very unwell, and made no effort to preside at the 
Conference, leaving this office, as he says, to the pre- 
siding elders. He made the appointments, and man- 



174 Francis As bury. 

aged to preach a few times. After he had presided 
over the Baltimore Conference, he began his weary 
journey to the south; and sick as he was, he man- 
aged to keep in motion until after he had made half 
the journey to Charleston. He had reached Bruns- 
wick county, Virginia, when it became evident that 
if he attempted to go on he would likely forfeit his 
life, and reluctantly he yielded to the inevitable. 
For nearly twelve months he had been seriously ill, 
and yet he had persisted in working. But it was ev- 
ident to all that if he ever did any more work he must 
now seek a shelter. So he prepared his plan of ap- 
pointments for the South Carolina Conference and 
sent it by Jesse Lee to Jonathan Jackson, and re- 
solved to lie by in Brunswick for the winter. He 
could not have found a better place for resting. 
Brunswick was the home of the Methodists. Here 
they had won their greatest victories. The people 
were all known to him, and were all his friends. He 
fixed his retreat at the home of Edward Dromgoole. 
Edward Dromgoole was an Irishman; a local 
preacher who had traveled for some years and now 
was living on a plantation of his own. His circum- 
stances were easy, and he w r as glad to give his old 
friend a home during these weary days of invalid 
life. Dr. Sims kindly attended him, and the local 
preachers, Lane, Moore, Smith, and Phillips, came 
to see him and cheer him up. He was in confine- 
ment here for three months. He was not confined 
to his bed, but was unable to go far from the house. 
The weather was very severe, and he was very fee- 
ble. He took fearful quantities of medicine. Tar- 
tar emetic in large doses was his favorite remedy, 
and the exhausted, feeble man was well bled by his 



Francis As bury. 175 

kind physician; and at last he took a diet, as he 
calls it, which was so remarkable that it deserves 
mention. It was one quart of hard cider; one hun- 
dred nails; a handful of snakeroot; a handful of 
pennell seed; a handful of wormwood. Boiled from 
one quart to a pint, one wine glassful was taken 
every morning for nine or ten days, the patient using 
no butter or milk or meat. He says, what one may 
well believe: "It will make the stomach very sick." 

Confined to a quiet country home, he had much 
time for reflection, and he tried to solve some very 
hard questions. "How could God have condoned 
polygamy, slavery, and such like, under the earlier 
dispensation, and condemned them now?" He an- 
swered these questions perhaps as well as any oth- 
ers have been able to answer them. He drew the 
conclusion that while men may of two evils choose 
the least, Christians should of two evils choose nei- 
ther. He was especially puzzled on the question of 
slave-owning. No man was ever more bitterly op- 
posed to slavery; no man was on better terms with 
slave owners. They were his dearest friends, and 
in their piety he had the greatest confidence. They 
knew his views and respected them, but did not 
emancipate their slaves. Despite all his efforts, the 
sentiment in favor of immediate emancipation did 
not grow. He says: "I am brought to conclude that 
slavery will exist in Virginia perhaps for ages. 
There is not sufficient sense of religion nor of liberty 
to destroy it. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, 
in the highest flights of rapturous piety, still main- 
tain and defend it." He realized the character of 
his peculiar situation — denouncing slavery, yet 
friendly with slave owners, and supported by the 



176 Francis As bury. 

proceeds of slave labor. And sometimes he frets 
under it, feeling that it almost made a slave of him, 
when he was free born. 

He could do little. He wrote a few letters, read 
his Bible, and wrote up his journal. The class met 
at his home, and he ventured to give a short exhor- 
tation and a prayer. Despite his diet and his heroic 
doses of tartar, he did not recover his strength; and 
as he was confined to the house, he assisted the good 
dame in winding broaches and picking cotton. In 
those days there were no cotton gins, and the cotton 
which made the clothing was prepared by hand for 
the loom, and to the little children was committed 
the tedious task of winding broaches. The sick 
bishop spent his time in helping them in this work, 
and spent a little time in revising his journal. His 
brethren sent him loving letters, which cheered him 
up. His feebleness and his confinement depressed 
him; but while he was with the women and children, 
winding cotton and hearing them read Alleine and 
Doddridge, his soul was much blessed. The snow fell 
and he was low-spirited; but good Betsey and Nancy 
Pelham, young Virginian maids, helped him by read- 
ing to him Doddridge's Sermons to Young People. 

Thus matters went on in Brunswick, where, in 
the homes of Pelham and Dromgoole, he spent the 
whole winter of 1797. He scorned to be idle, and 
spent his days in teaching the children grammar 
and in little tasks around the home until the last 
of March, when he began to venture out again. He 
was now so far recruited as to enter upon his work; 
and while he did not fully recover his strength, he 
was able to do efficient w T ork for over ten years after 
this trying attack. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

1798. 

Asbury Out of His Sick Room — Recovery — Views on Slavery — 
On Local Preachers — Some of His Mistakes — Virginia Con- 
ference — O'Kelly — Tour Northward — Death of Dickins. 

THE early spring of 1789 found Asbury able to 
stir out again. He was in the midst of slave 
owners, and these were his kind friends; but, as we 
have seen, he was by no means reconciled to slavery, 
and w T as as decided as ever that it should, if possible, 
be abolished; and when Philip Sands visited him, he 
consulted with him about taking some measures to 
drive it at least from the local ministry. There 
were few, perhaps none, of the traveling preachers 
who owned slaves or were likely to own any; but the 
local preachers, who were more numerous, and who 
were men of families, were, many of them, owners 
of plantations worked by slaves. 

Asbury never seemed to think that a slave under 
the guardianship of a pious local preacher might 
have been better off than if he were free. He came 
to that conclusion in after years, but now he was for 
rooting the evil out by stern measures, and succeed- 
ed not in getting rid of slavery, but in driving from 
the Church some excellent people. "Some of our 
local preachers," he says, "complain that they have 
not a seat in the general Annual Conference. We 
answer, if they will do the duty of a member of the 
Annual Conference, they may have the seat and 
privilege of the traveling line. The local preachers 
12 (177) 



178 Francis Asbury. 

go where and when they please; can preach any- 
where, or nowhere; can keep plantations and slaves; 
can receive fifty or a hundred dollars per year for 
marriages, and all the fees we receive we must re- 
turn at the Conference." He was confident that the 
law for traveling preachers and that for lay preach- 
ers should be different. 

Mr. Asbury was not very much given to look on 
two sides of a question at the same time. Indeed, 
to him moral questions had but two sides; one was 
the right, the other the wrong side, and he did not 
care to see any but the side he thought was right. 
He knew it was wrong for the ministry to be covet- 
ous or self-indulgent, or eager for human praise; 
and it never seemed to occur to him that in his effort 
to provide a ministry, who knew nothing but selt- 
abnegation, he might educate a membership to grasp 
and hold and develop in themselves a selfishness 
which demanded everything and gave nothing. 
Some of his members in Maryland and Virginia 
could have paid the entire salary or quarterage of 
his preacher with a week's income, but that member 
would content himself with his quarterly contribu- 
tion of a contemptible sum, and rejoice in the hero- 
ism of the self-sacrificing itinerant. Sixty-four dol- 
lars, and no more, was the allowance to pastor, bish- 
op, or elder. If the people gave either of them any- 
thing, he must report that to the Conference, and it 
should be deducted from his stipend. If he was un- 
fortunately married, his wife should have the same 
allowance, and his children not fourteen years old 
should have sixteen dollars. If over that, they must 
take care of themselves. He knew sixty-four dol- 
lars was enough for a single man with tastes as sim- 



Francis Asbury. 179 

pie as his own; with that he could buy books and 
clothing and a horse now and then. If one had 
slaves he must free them, a farm he must leave it. 
In all this the good bishop saw only the noble spirit 
of self-sacrifice on the part of his guild, and by such 
demands he did develop a nobility of soul and an he- 
roic unselfishness unsurpassed since the days of the 
early apostles. The effect upon the Church, howev- 
er, was so harmful that it was a long time before a 
proper reaction came. Whether that reaction has 
not gone too far is a question still unsettled. The 
Baptists and the Quakers, in their opposition to a 
hireling ministry, were seconded by the early Meth- 
odists in their cheap gospel. The compulsory tax 
to support priests, levied over the entire country by 
the Established Church, aroused the spirit of oppo- 
sition to a salaried ministry, which gave great ex- 
cuse in after time for men to cover their avarice un- 
der the guise of religious simplicity. A fair biog- 
raphy must exhibit the weaknesses of the subject, 
if they exist, as well as the excellences, but Asbury's 
failings leaned to virtue's side. He had been a sad- 
dler — it was certainly not to his discredit that he 
had been; and poor, deranged William Glendening, 
who had an insane hostility to him, told it as if it 
was something to be ashamed of. Asbury says: "A 
friend of mine was inquisitive of my trade and ap- 
prenticeship, as William Glendening had reported. 
As he asked me so plainly, I told him that I counted 
it no reproach to have been taught to get my own 
living." 

He was able to get to Salem in Brunswick, where 
the Virginia Conference met, and then rode slowly 
toward Baltimore, trying to preach as he went. 



180 Francis As bury. 

There was yet no Methodist church in the city of 
Richmond, but he preached in the courthouse. He 
reached Baltimore on the 25th of April. The Con- 
ference began May 2. He says: "It was half-yearly, 
to bring on an equality by the change from fall to 
spring. We had to correct the many offenses giv- 
en at many Conferences to one particular man. 1 
pleased myself with the idea that I was out of the 
quarrel ; but no, I was in deeper than ever, and never 
was wounded in so deep a manner. It was as much 
as I could bear. I cannot stand such strokes." 

I confess my inability to understand some of these 
allusions. Some one had wounded the sensitive 
sick man. Who that one was I do not know, but it- 
is evident from other parts of his journal that As- 
bury was not able to separate the personal from the 
official, and counted all opposition to his measures 
as opposition to himself. He left Baltimore in his 
sulky, and without meeting with anything of special 
interest he reached Philadelphia and presided over 
his Conferences there and at New York, and visited 
New England. The cities gave him trouble; they 
wished, he said, to have the connection drafted, and 
some of the most acceptable preachers detailed to 
serve them. In New York he heard of his fathers 
death. The good man was eighty-five years old; 
had lived well, and died happy. O'Kelly, after some 
years of persistent agitation, now attacked Asbnry 
in a severe pamphlet. He had, Asbury said, taken 
the butt end of his whip to him, and among other 
charges he made was that Asbury wished to be 
called a bishop. The journal says: "James O'Kelly 
hath told a tale of me, which I think it is my duty to 
tell better. He writes, ' Francis ordered the preach- 



Francis Asbvby. 181 

ers to entitle him bishop in directing their letters/ 
The secret truth of the matter was this : The preach- 
ers having had great difficulties about the appella- 
tion of Mr. and Kev., it was talked over in the yearly 
Conference, for then we had no General Confer- 
ence established. So we concluded that it would be 
by far the best to give each man his official title, 
as deacon, elder, and bishop. To this the majority 
agreed. James O'Kelly giveth all the good, the bad, 
and middling of all the order of our Church to me. 
What can be the cause of all this ill treatment* 
which I receive from him? Was it because I could 
not settle him for life in the South District of Vir- 
ginia? Is this his gratitude? He was in this dis- 
trict for ten years as presiding elder, and there was 
no peace with James, until Dr. Coke took the matter 
out of my hands. After we had agreed to hold a 
General Conference to settle the dispute, and be- 
hold when the General Conference by a majority 
went against him, he treated the General Confer- 
ence with as much contempt almost as he had treat- 
ed me, only I am the butt of all his spleen." 

He made quite an extensive tour through New 
England. He received small hospitality, and says: 
"We frequently spend a dollar a day to feed our- 
selves and horses. I never received as I recollect, 
any personal beneficence, no, not a farthing, in New 
England, and perhaps never shall, unless I shall be 
totally out of cash." 

He now went to New Hampshire and Maine, and 
attended the first Conference ever held in Maine. 
Despite his fatigue, he improved in health. He met 
the New England Conference at Granville, and then 
returned southward. 



182 Francis As bury. 

His dear old friend, John Dickins, who passed 
safely through one epidemic of yellow fever in Phil- 
adelphia, had fallen a victim to another. "For pi- 
ety, probity, profitable teaching, holy living, Chris- 
tian education of his children, secret closet prayer," 
he says, "I doubt whether his superior is to be found 
in America." 

His horse was worn down, but his friend Philip 
Rogers, converted under his ministry in Baltimore 
twenty years before, lent him another; and with 
Richard What coat as a companion, he made his way 
by his usual route to Rembert's in South Carolina, 
where he spent a week; and after calling at Robert 
Bowman's, he came to Charleston, where he received 
a cooling letter from the north. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

1799. 

Asbury in the Last Year of the Century— Charleston— North 
Carolina— Advice of Physicians — Feebleness of Whatcoat — 
Jesse Lee and Benjamin BlantOn — Henry Parks — Tait's, 
Pope's, and Grant's — Extensive Tour Through Georgia — 
Charleston Again. 

BISHOP ASBURY remained in Charleston a 
month, and then returned northward. To fol- 
low him every day would be a somewhat w T earisonie 
task to the general reader, but there is an interest 
attached to the names of persons and places along 
the route which makes the otherwise dull journal 
interesting. He went by Ragin's and Hawkins's, 
in South Carolina, into Bladen, in North Carolina, 
where he preached at Shallott Church; then by Town 
Creek, where his dear friends, Stephen Daniel and 
his good wife, used ta entertain him; to Nixon and 
Stone Bay, and friend Johnson's; to William Bryan's 
and Colonel Bryan's; to Trenton, then to New Berne, 
and then twenty-four miles to Cox's, on Neuse Riv- 
er. I have given this extract from his journal merely 
to show how close was his attention to little things, 
as well as to present names which are still promi- 
nent in Southern Methodism. The people among 
whom he found his chief friends in South Carolina 
and North Carolina were nearly all of the same 
class — plain, independent, well-to-do farmers, with 
a few slaves, and a sufficient quantity of arable land 
on which, to make a good living. They knew little 

(183) 



184 Francis Asbury. 

of luxury, but lived in comfort. They were inde- 
pendent yeomanry, who were generally of English 
descent, and most of whom had made what they had 
by hard toil. A few of the wealthy were Metho- 
dists, but the most of them had little use for Meth- 
odism, and Methodism less use for them and their 
ways. There was, however, a boundless hospital- 
ity, and from Charleston to Baltimore he had free 
entertainment. 

He presided over the Conference in Baltimore, and 
then went to the eastern shore, going down to the 
lowest country in Maryland, and then through Del- 
aware northward. He called a consultation of phy- 
sicians in Delaware, and they advised that he should 
discontinue preaching entirely, because they feared a 
consumption or dropsy in the chest. He, however, 
pressed on through Philadelphia into eastern New 
York, and then back down the Hudson, stopping 
at Kinderhook, Rhinebeck, Albany, and Coeyman's 
landing, through rain and damp into New Jersey, 
and then through southern Pennsylvania into Mary- 
land. He came through Loudoun, Berkley, Fred- 
erick, Shenandoah, Culpepper, Madison, Orange, 
Louisa, and Hanover, and thence to Eichmond. He 
says: "I need much faith and good water." He 
found a pleasant retreat at John Ellis's, within two 
miles of Richmond, and would have preached in the 
walls of the new house at Richmond, but the heavy 
rain prevented. 

He put a blister on his breast, and went on his way 
through Chesterfield, Powhatan, Cumberland, and 
Buckingham, into Prince Edward. The weather was 
hot, the blister was running, he had no rest night or 
dav — no wonder he says, "I would not live always." 



Francis As bury. 185 

Poor, aged Whatcoat was with him. He had a 
sore on his leg, and Asbury a sore breast inside and 
out. John Spencer, however, gave them a good home, 
and he rested two days; then he rode into Halifax 
county, and had a large congregation on the Ban- 
ister, and thence into Pittsylvania, and into North 
Carolina. He was now in Rockingham county, and 
through Rockingham, Stokes, and Guilford, sick and 
tired, he came into Rowan, and thence through Ire- 
dell, Wilkes, and Lincoln into York county, South 
Carolina. Benjamin Blanton met him there. His 
famous horse was dead of the staggers, and in four 
years the hard-working young elder had received 
two hundred and fifty dollars. 

Bishop Asbury preached at Golden Grove, on the 
Saluda, where the land w r as rich, and at Cox's meet- 
inghouse, where there was the best society in South 
Carolina, and went thence into Pendleton, " where 
Mr. James Nash and his family, though not in so- 
ciety, were our kindest friends." 

He crossed the Savannah River at Cherokee ford, 
and came safe to William Tait's, in Elbert county, 
Georgia. He was attended by Jesse Lee, who was 
with him in all this journey, and by Benjamin 
Blanton. He rode in a covered gig, which was called 
"The Felicity," and kept dry, while Blanton and Lee 
took the rain. There was now at the forks, near Pe- 
tersburg, a chapel, built by William Tait, who had 
moved from Cokesbury, in Maryland, and who was 
the father of Judge Tait; and here he w r as made ex- 
ceedingly comfortable for a little time, and then, on 
a raw day, rode twenty miles, where he preached in 
a cold meetinghouse to a warm-hearted people, and 
where his friend Ralph Banks entertained him, and 



186 Francis Asb ub r. 

his wife, the hearty young mother of thirteen chil- 
dren, gave him a Virginia welcome. Ralph Banks 
was one of the leading men of that country, and As- 
bury often afterwards found lodging at his home. 
Henry Parks, the father of William J. Parks, fa- 
mous in Georgia, had been converted and built his 
cabin chapel in the woods of Franklin, and Asbury 
found it. He was now in a new country, just be- 
ing settled by a body of sturdy immigrants from 
North Carolina and Virginia. The preachers came 
to Charles Wakefield's, in the new county of Ogle- 
thorpe, when poor Blanton broke down and went to 
bed with a high fever, and Asbury sent the hearty, 
happy, healthy Lee on to the head waters of the 
Oconee, while he stayed behind to nurse his sick 
companion, whom he housed in his carriage, and 
rode Blanton's stiff-jointed horse, that he would only 
ride, he said, "to save souls or the health of a broth- 
er." He went now to the hospitable home of Bur- 
rell Pope. These Popes, Henry and Burrell, had 
come from Virginia, and had a meetinghouse, iu 
which the congregation, the journal says, "seemed 
more wealthy than religious." 

He went on his tour, stopping at the widow Stew- 
art's, and reaching the village of Greensboro, then 
quite a sprightly county town. Then to Burke's and 
to John Crutchfield's, and to Mark's- meetinghouse, 
in the forks of Broad River, and to Hope Hull's and 
David Meriwether's, and to his old friend Thomas 
Grant's. They now turned their faces eastward, and 
passed the wagons laden with rum; and stopping at 
Thomas Haynes's and James Allen's, they rode once 
more into Augusta. The little city had much im- 
proved in every respect but religion. There was as 



Francis Asbury. 187 

yet no organized religious body in it, though there 
was sometimes preaching. He heard a sermon in 
the morning and preached one in the afternoon, and 
over wretched roads he traveled on till he reached 
Charleston. 

The itinerary I have given will perhaps only in- 
terest those who will take the map and mark the 
course he and his companion took. Journeys such 
as this will never be made again, and if made now 
would be vain labor. But Lee and Asbury planted 
seed as they w r ent along which is ripening yet. 

The Conference was soon held. There w T as really 
but little to do. The recital of religious experiences, 
the careful examination of character, the preaching, 
then the appointments, and all was over. There 
were now twenty-three members present in the Con- 
ference, whose work extended into three states, 
where, on his first vMt, Lee and Willis and himself 
had begun the work only fifteen years before. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

1800, 

Beginning of the New Century— Asbury Rests a Month— Wash- 
ington's Death — Nicholas Sne then— General Conference— 
Great Revival — Whatcoat's Election as Bishop — Journey 
Northward. 

AFTER a year of immense labor, during which 
he had traveled incessantly, Asbury now de- 
cided to rest for a month in the balmy air of Charles- 
ton. The South Carolina Conference convened on 
the first of January. The work was all hard and 
there was little choice in appointments, and so they 
were easily made. In no Conference was Asbury's 
administration recogni'zed as, wise to a greater de- 
gree than here. Jesse Lee was with him, to relieve 
him of much of the fatigue of preaching and of 
presiding, and in three days the Conference session 
closed. 

While the Conference was in session the tidings 
came that Washington was dead. Asbury had met 
him twice. In company with Dr. Coke, he called on 
him once at Mount Vernon to get his signature to a 
petition to the Virginia legislature for the abolition 
of slavery, and dined with him; and a second time, 
in New York, after he was elected to the presidency, 
Coke and Asbury called to present him the address 
of the Conference. Other than this he had no com- 
munication with him, but he had for him the high- 
est admiration. He calls him "the intrepid chief, 
the disinterested friend, the temporal savior of his 
(188) 



Francis Asbury. 189 

country, the matchless man." He paid a tribute to 
him in his Sunday sermon. 

Asbury now decided to take a little needed rest, 
and Jesse Lee, who was strong and active, though 
he weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, took John 
Garvin with him and rode to St. Mary on Asbury's 
old gray. St. Mary was then the remotest English 
settlement in the United States. The weather was 
exceedingly severe, snow falling to the depth of eight- 
een inches in South Carolina. Nicholas Snethen, 
a gifted young Jerseyman, was with Asbury, and 
during the snowy weather read to the bishop from 
the sermons of Saurin. Asbury was not at all well, 
but kept up with his correspondence, preached oc- 
casionally, visited the Orphan House, which was 
then superior to any institution in America, and on 
Jesse Lee's return, after a rest of six weeks, he left 
Charleston. The roads were bad, the weather cold, 
and it was a w r eek before he reached Rembert's, and 
went thence into North Carolina. Appointments 
had been sent ahead, and there was preaching every 
day. The journey was through the central part of 
North Carolina, and the travelers came by the rough 
roads to the university, to Raleigh, and through the 
upper counties into Virginia. 

A friend asked him for the loan of fifty pounds. 
"He might as well have asked," he said, "for Peru. 
I showed him all the money I had in the world — 
twelve dollars — and gave him five." It was the 
same oft-told story of Virginia travel: wretched 
roads, bad weather, but hospitable homes and com- 
fortable lodgings. He presided at the Virginia Con- 
ference, which met g/t Norfolk and remained in ses- 



190 Francis Asbury. 

sion three days; he then pressed on toward Balti- 
more, where the General Conference was to meet. 
There was now quite a company of preachers, for 
Lemuel Andrews and William McKendree, as well 
as Snethen and Lee, were with him. 

They made their way to Baltimore. There the 
fourth General Conference of the Methodists opened 
its work on the 6th of May, and continued in ses- 
sion two weeks. Dr. Coke was there and presided. 
Asbury had fully made up his mind to resign his of- 
fice as bishop, and so expressed himself to his breth 
ren, but they insisted so earnestly on his remaining 
a bishop that he consented to do so. It was evident 
that the American preachers did not wish to have Dr. 
Coke in Asbury's place, or even as his associate, and 
yet it was as evident that some one must be chosen 
for the place. Perhaps before the Conference met 
there had been little question as to w r ho that associ- 
ate should be, and that one was Jesse Lee. For two 
years he had been in training for this office, for 
which he had every qualification. He no doubt ex- 
pected it, and Asbury was perhaps as confident as 
his traveling companion that he would be chosen; 
but the vote was cast, and there was a tie between 
Whatcoat and Lee. Another vote came later, and 
by a majority of four votes the feeble and aged 
Whatcoat, whom the Conference had refused to re- 
ceive as bishop by Mr. Wesley's appointment, was 
elected. Mr. Asbury was Whatcoat's bosom friend. 
He believed, and truly, that there was no better 
man. He did not, it may be, do anything to elect 
him, or to defeat the strong and somewhat angular 
Lee, but he was neutral. A word from him would 



Francis As bury. 191 

probably have secured the result which Lee's friends 
expected. I think it unquestionable that Lee and 
his friends were seriously hurt with him, and while 
Bishop Asbury disclaimed saying anything to Lee's 
disparagement, Lee's defeat was largely attributed 
to his indifference. If he made a mistake, as many 
think he did, he suffered severely for it. Whatcoat 
was a good man, the country had in it no better; but 
save that he was a good man, and a good preacher, 
he seems to have had no other qualification for the 
episcopacy. He was sixty-four years old, in feeble 
health, and a man of such quiet, mystical spirit that 
he was utterly unsuited to taking the important com- 
mand now devolving on him; and instead of reliev- 
ing Asbury, he burdened him. The Conference did 
little more than make this election. It decided, 
however, that hereafter the preachers might have 
eighty dollars instead of sixty-four, and need not ac- 
count for all their presents. 

Asbury visited his old friend Rogers, at Green- 
wood, and then went to Gough's, and with Whatcoat 
began his northward journey. 

The General Conference which had just adjourned 
was perhaps the most remarkable for the religious 
effect on the community of any which ever assem- 
bled in America. In Old Town — Baltimore — a great 
revival began, which continued during the entire 
session, and over one hundred professed conversion 
during the sitting of the Conference. This was the 
beginning in the east of that wonderful revival ep- 
och which continued for nearly ten years, and which 
swept over the whole country. The revival fire was 
burning in Delaware, whither the two bishops went 



192 Francis Asbury. 

to Conference; and at Dover the love feast began 
at eight and continued until four, and some people 
never left the house till midnight. At Duck Creek, 
a little country hamlet, where the preachers of the 
Philadelphia Confe-rence assembled, a revival began, 
and over a hundred were converted. Asbury and his 
companion, however, hastened on to Wilmington, 
and then on to Chester, where the good Mary Withey 
still lived; and happily raised above her doubts, and 
rejoicing in God, she gladly received them, as she 
had the Lord's prophets for twenty-eight or twenty- 
nine years. Asbury was gladdened by the news 
which reached him from all sections. There were 
great revivals everywhere. He thought our Pente- 
cost had come. In Edisto (South Carolina), Guilford 
(North Carolina), Franklin, Amelia, Gloucester (Vir- 
ginia), Baltimore, Cecil (Maryland), Dover, Duck 
Creek, and Milford (Delaware), the work was glori- 
ous; and to add to his joy, to the astonishment of his 
friends as well as his own, his health was restored. 
In New York City, where the next Conference was 
held, there was a gracious revival. One evening the 
services continued till after midnight, and twenty 
souls found the Lord. He made his annual visit to 
the Sherwood farm, and found that his dear old 
nurse, Betsy Sherwood, was gone to glory. He made 
his usual tour through New England. It is very ev- 
ident that the land of the Puritans was not to his 
taste, but there were many things among the people 
he thought very praiseworthy. The roads were built 
for ages, and the simplicity and frugality of the New 
England matron were admirable. "She, as a moth- 
er, mistress, maid, or wife, is a worthy woman. Here 



Francis Asbury. 193 

are no noisy negroes running and laughing. If you 
wish breakfast at six or seven, there is no setting the 
table an hour before the breakfast can be produced." 
He made his way to the place of Conference session 
in Massachusetts and congratulated himself that 
after riding thirteen hundred miles he had finished 
the six Conferences in seven months. He did not 
relish the compulsory church tax, and when he rode 
through Weston and saw the grand steeple and 
porches, and even the stalls for the horses, he says: 
"It is well if they do not make the Methodists pay to 
support their pomp. Oh, religion in New England!" 

The tour was a long one, leading the two bishops 
through New England during the hot days of the 
summer. Poor Whatcoat found it hard work to 
keep up with his senior colleague, and came so near 
fainting that Asbury had to give up his carriage to 
him. He now returned through Connecticut, and 
joined Garrettson. The saintly lady of Livingston 
Manor, who had been the first to invite the Meth- 
odist preachers to Khinebeck and receive them into 
her home, was dead. She gave her daughter, Cath- 
erine, to a Methodist preacher, but never herself left 
the Reformed Church, in which she had been con- 
verted. The two bishops returned to New York 
City, and, preaching on the way, went through New 
Jersey into Pennsylvania, and reached Baltimore 
again by the first of September. On every breeze 
Asbury heard news of victory, and he shouts, "Glo- 
ry! glory! glory!" Perhaps six hundred souls had 
been converted in Maryland alone since the General 
Conference. 

After traveling through Maryland he came into 
13 



194 Francis As bury. 

Loudoun, Virginia, and here mentions for the first 
time his visit to the widow Koszel. She was the 
saintly mother of that great man Stephen George 
Roszel, who in obedience to his mandate began to 
travel a circuit. He came to Rectortown, and the 
hospitable gentry did the best thing for the two 
bishops they knew. They gave them a barbecue, or, 
as Asbury calls it, a green-corn feast, with a roasted 
animal, cooked and eaten out of doors under a booth. 
The next barbecue he came to was not intended for 
the bishops, since there was a horse race attached 
to it. His journey was through the midst of Virgin- 
ia, and he mentions a visit to Lynchburg, then a 
sprightly young town on the James, where he 
preached in a town hall. Through the hills they 
rode to Liberty, now Bedford City, where he found 
the people so anxious to see a live bishop that they 
gathered around his carriage as if he had a cake-and- 
cider cart. He preached in the courthouse, and went 
to brother Paterson's and to Blackwell's. 

He then climbed the mountains of Botetourt and 
went to Fincastle. He was on his way to the Hol- 
ston country, and rode to Christians, now Christians- 
burg, and down the line of the present Norfolk and 
Western railway through Wytheville, Abingdon, and 
what is now Bristol, and rested at his old friend Van 
Pelt's in East Tennessee. Here he left his tired 
horse and, with another furnished by his host, began 
his journey to Kentucky. It had been several years 
since he had made a visitation to this then remote 
section. McKendree was now with the bishops, and 
together they crossed the mountains, and riding one 
hundred and forty miles, they reached the new school 



Francis As bury. 195 

projected by Francis Poythress and known as Bethel. 
Asbury was much dejected at the prospect. Here in 
an obscure place, surrounded by the Kentucky Riv- 
er in part ; was a large, expensive building, only part- 
ly finished. The lowest sum which could keep the 
school designed at work would be £300, without 
which it would be useless, and there was in sight nei- 
ther funds nor principal nor pupils. Poythress had 
worn himself out, and was to be relieved. The work 
in Kentucky had grow T n much in interest, and de- 
manded a careful supervision. Settlers by thou- 
sands had poured into the new state, and while there 
were not many Methodists among them, so few that 
in traveling two or three hundred miles he had only 
been entertained in six homes, yet there was an im- 
perative call to provide for the surging immigration. 
After a few days at Bethel, the bishops and their 
companion, McKendree, struck out through the new- 
ly-opened country for the settlements on the banks 
of the Cumberland. They made their way through 
the prairies, then know r n as the barrens, and soaked 
by rain and exhausted by fatigue they at last reached 
Nashville, the new 7 town on the Cumberland River. 
The pioneers had been here before them, and a new T 
church was projected. It was to be of stone; it 
would hold wiien completed a thousand people; it 
was as yet neither floored, ceiled, nor glazed. He 
now came in contact with the celebrated coalition 
between Presbyterians and Methodists, which cre- 
ated such a sensation and brought about such re- 
sults, in which the McGees, Craig, Hodge, Rankin, 
and Adair took part with the Methodist McGee and 
others of the early Methodist preachers. The camp 



196 F BANC IS ASBUBY. 

meeting was now begun by these people, and Asbury, 
Whatcoat, and McKendree were at the close of one 
held at Drake's meetinghouse. There were a thou- 
sand present on the week-day and two thousand on 
Sunday. The stand was in the open air, in a grove 
of beech trees. At night fires were blazing here and 
there, and the religious excitement rose high, and 
the services were protracted into the midnight. As- 
bury was delighted that God was visiting the sons of 
the Puritans, who, he says somewhat complacently^ 
were candid enough to acknowledge their obliga- 
tions to the Methodists. The travelers were now 
compelled to return to the east, going by a route 
which led them through the Indian nation. They 
entered the white settlements, and finally reached 
Knoxville. As yet there was no Methodist church 
there, and Asbury preached to about seven hundred 
persons in the statehouse. Two days' riding on 
horseback brought him to Van Pelt's, where he had 
left his horse and chaise. His host, who had come 
to these wilds from New York, kindly took care of 
him until he and his companions had recruited, and 
then they made their way by what is now the rail- 
way route by Paint Rock and Asheville toward the 
east. He was walking over the mountain at Paint 
Rock, and his horse, which was led by another, reeled 
and fell over, taking the chaise with him. The horse 
turned a complete somersault, and the carriage was 
as completely turned over, but by a heavy lift they 
were both righted, and, strange- to say, neither horse 
nor carriage had received any serious damage. 
Without further accident they reached Asheville. 
He had now pretty well made the entire circuit, and 



Francis As bury. 197 

found himself in November near the same point he 
had passed in January. 

He had wonderfully recovered his strength, and 
his religious life had a sereneness which was not 
usual to him, but he was not as strong as he thought 
he was, and these labors told upon him. The jour- 
ney through the mountains, however, was not yet 
over, and the travelers pressed on into what is now 
Pickens, South Carolina; then into Georgia, where 
they made a circuit of almost half the then settled 
part of the state; and then into South Carolina again, 
bringing up at Camden, where the South Carolina 
Conference was to hold its session. 



CHAPTEE XXYIIL 

1801. 

Troubles About Slavery — Death of Jarratt — Northern Tour — 
Eevival Days — Southern Tour — Charleston Again. 

THE bishop had made the entire circuit of the 
Conferences without any failure to meet each 
on time, and the new year of 1801 found him at Cam- 
den. Isaac Smith, his old friend at whose home he 
made an annual halt, had settled in this little village, 
and had established a Methodist society and built a 
church, and now with two others he proposed to en- 
tertain the South Carolina Conference. The Con- 
ference remained in session for five days and then 
adjourned. The bishops decided to rest a few days, 
but on January 9th started on their northward jour- 
ney. They entered into North Carolina, and then re- 
turned into South Carolina and made quite a tour 
through that state. The General Conference had 
made a very decided utterance on the question of 
negro slavery, and it had aroused great hostility to 
the Methodists in South Carolina. Asbury indorsed 
the utterance fully, but felt the embarrassment under 
which it placed him and his brethren. He advised 
that by increasing effort and faithful preaching they 
should live down the prejudice against them. He 
said nothing could so effectually alarm some of the 
citizens of South Carolina against the Methodists as 
the address of the General Conference. "The rich 
among the people never thought us worthy to preach 
(198) 



Francis As bury. 199 

to them ; they did indeed give their slaves liberty to 
hear, and join our Church, and now it appears that 
the poor African will no longer have this privilege." 
No wonder that Asbury afterwards doubted the wis- 
dom of a course which had produced such a result. 
Bishop Whatcoat had been with him since his elec- 
tion in May; indeed, it is evident that Asbury was 
not willing to give into any other hands the work or 
any part of it which he had so long directed. He 
was willing enough to have Whatcoat with him to 
relieve him of the labor of preaching, but he had lit- 
tle confidence in his ability to plan and arrange the 
work. Generally there were two sermons a day. 
Whatcoat followed Asbury, or Asbury followed 
Whatcoat, and three hours were often taken up by 
the service. They made their way through lower 
North Carolina, and at Wilmington Asbury was in- 
vited to preach in the St. James Episcopal Church, 
which he did to a large congregation. The route 
pursued by the bishops was the one so often taken 
by Asbury in going to and from Charleston, and the 
journey was void of any special interest. The Vir- 
ginia Conference was to meet at Dromgoole's April 1, 
and the two bishops were engaged in preaching in 
eastern North Carolina and eastern Virginia until the 
session commenced. The congregations at the Con- 
ference were very large. While the preachers were 
holding their indoor session the people were being- 
preached to out of doors; and on Sunday, while As- 
bury was preaching in the house, William Ormond 
was preaching outside. 

His old friend Devereaux Jarratt was dead. This 
Episcopal minister was the first man to preach the 



200 Francis As bub y. 

doctrines of Methodism in Virginia. He had been 
alienated from the Methodists in latter years, but 
was never in good accord with his own Episcopal 
brethren. He loved Asbury, and between them 
there was never any discord or even coolness. The 
good old clergyman had been cruelly wounded by 
Dr. Coke, and especially by some .things in Coke's 
journal; but as the time came for him to go to the 
world beyond, his affection for Asbury grew strong- 
er, and when he died his wife requested Asbury to 
preach his funeral sermon, which he did. He hur- 
ried northward to the Conference in Maryland,which 
met at Pipe Creek. Here, Asbury says, Mr. Straw- 
bridge formed the first society in Maryland and in 
America. The effort to give any other meaning to 
this expression than it bears has not been successful ; 
and while the argument in favor of the first society 
in America having been formed in New York is not to 
be despised, it cannot very well stand against this 
positive statement of Asbury's, made after that in 
the Discipline by himself, and Dr. Coke, in which he 
gave to the New York society the priority. 

The Baltimore Conference remained in session 
four days, and the bishops spent the interval be- 
tween the adjournment and the beginning of the 
Philadelphia Conference in visiting the churches on 
the eastern shore. One day Asbury preached and 
Whatcoat exhorted, and the next day Whatcoat 
preached and Asbury exhorted; and thus they went 
on toward Philadelphia. He mentions a little inci- 
dent, illustrating the character of those primitive 
days, that is worth reciting. A Mr. Hughes, an Irish 
Methodist, had conducted a school, and the bishop 



Francis As bury. 201 

was urged to go to the examination. He went, and 
was greatly pleased at the pedagogue's success. The 
master had provided a medal, but the committee 
thought it proper to keep it for a future examina- 
tion, and a subscription in money was taken to fur- 
nish the children each with a small silver piece, and 
so make them equal in a "free country." The bish- 
op's foot was seriously inflamed, but Dr. Physick 
applied caustic; and while he was crippled for two 
months, the treatment was effective for his final cure. 

The Philadelphia society was sadly divided. As- 
bury had been harassed by the condition of things 
there even while in South Carolina; but here, con- 
fined to his room and forced to contend with the sons 
of Belial who had so wretchedly divided the Church, 
it was specially trying. After two months' stay in 
Sodom, as he calls Philadelphia, he began his tour 
among the churches, and went direct to Baltimore. 
Here he found things in a very cheering condition, 
for at Perry Hall, where Mr. Gough had a chapel, he 
found a revival going on. 

He was to join Bishop Whatcoat in Frederick. 
He made his journey among his old friends and met 
Whatcoat at Fredericktown, and they mapped out 
the work. Bishop Whatcoat was to go eastward 
and Asbury, with Nicholas Snethen, was to go west- 
ward. He went up the valley, preaching at Win- 
chester, Woodstock, Harrisburg, Staunton, Fairfield, 
and Lexington. This beautiful section was popu- 
lated largely by Presbyterians, but the Methodists 
had established themselves all through the country, 
even then. The travelers came again to Madam Rus- 
sell's. Snethen, his young companion, who after- 



202 . Francis As bury. 

wards was one of the great men of the Methodist 
Protestant Church, was a preacher of great power, 
and as he was a vigorous man, he relieved the feeble 
bishop of much labor. While he had hoped the year 
before that he had fully recovered, he was painfully 
reminded of his weakness by a return of the same 
trouble; but his will kept him in motion, and in spite 
of mountains and execrable roads he made his way 
to Ebenezer in the Holston country, where the Con- 
ference met. In reaching this place he passed 
through the beautiful Elk Garden, and Snethen 
preached in the church. Here, in this remote part 
of southern Virginia, shut in by the mountains, there 
were valleys of matchless fertility, and hills clad in 
richest robes of native blue grass. A class of ex- 
cellent people had settled here and built a church. 
Asbury sought them out. The route to East Tennes- 
see was through the rugged Alleghanies, and it was 
only after a week of hard riding that they reached 
the seat of the Conference. At that time the Ken- 
tucky country and the Holston were in the same 
Conference, but such was the revival in Kentucky 
that the preachers in that section were not able to 
leave the work. McKendree was now in charge of 
this Kentucky District, as it is written in the min- 
utes, and had a diocese extending from the banks of 
the Scioto to the Holston and from the Alleghanies 
to the Mississippi. Snethen did most of the preach- 
ing, but Asbury was able to fill the appointment on 
Sunday, when there was much praise and shouting. 
The circuit of the Conferences was now over, and, 
with his eloquent young brother, Asbury came south- 
ward on an evangelistic tour through the connection. 



Francis As bury. 203 

Asbury was in his own view a Pauline bishop, and 
certainly no bishop of the primitive Church was ever 
more abundant in labors. Crossing the mountains 
of Xorth Carolina, he came through the western 
counties of the state into the upper part of South 
Carolina; and preaching every day, they made their 
way through Greenville, Laurens, Spartanburg, New- 
berry, and Edgefield to Augusta, Georgia. After 
years of fruitful and fitful work on the part of oth- 
ers, Stith Mead, a young Virginian, whose family 
resided in Augusta, had by his earnest ministry or- 
ganized a society in Augusta, and by giving five hun- 
dred dollars of his own money for a lot he had suc- 
ceeded in securing a subscription sufficient to build 
in the city what Asbury thought a very large and 
most elegant house. It was a plain, barn-like wood- 
en building which is now owned by the negroes of 
the Springfield Baptist Church. There was earnest 
preaching by Snethen, who excited considerable at- 
tention, but there were no conversions. They left 
the city and w r ent on through Columbia and Wilkes 
counties. Bishop Whatcoat had joined them, and 
while he went on to the southern part of the state, 
Asbury and Snethen went northward. This part of 
Georgia w r as now thickly settled with excellent peo- 
ple from Virginia and Maryland, and churches had 
been built all over the country. They were homely 
houses of logs, almost universally, but as good as 
the residences of the people. Asbury said: "The 
people, however, are extremely kind. I have ex- 
perienced great sensible enjoyment of God; our cab- 
ins are courts when Jesus is there." 

The two bishops now agreed to divide out the ter- 



204 Francis As bury. 

ritory, one going east, the other west, and Asbury 
struck out for the frontier, the more westerly coun- 
ties in Georgia. Stith Mead was a great revivalist, 
and in the rural districts of Georgia religious ex- 
citement ran very high. At Little River the meeting 
held for eight hours. In Warren they held a meet- 
ing from nine in the morning till three o'clock in the 
afternoon. These new central counties of Georgia 
were then bordering on the Indian nation. They 
were very fertile, and many settlers from Virginia 
and Maryland were crowding into them. Asbury 
went to the very border of the Indian country, and 
then turned his face eastward and made his way by 
the oft-traveled route to Charleston. There are now 
(1896) in lower South Carolina churches still stand- 
ing in the pine forests and swamps which Asbury 
visited on this journey. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

1802. 

Northward Again — A View of the Virginia Conference — Balti- 
more — His Mother's Death — Meeting with O'Kelly — Over 
the Alleghanies — Exposure in Tennessee — Sickness — Mc- 
Kendree — Reaches Camden and Eembert's. 

THE Conference convened at Camden again, and 
when it adjourned, with Nicholas Snethen the 
good bishop turned his face northward, and preach- 
ing as they went, Snethen and himself came to Sa- 
lem in Brunswick county, Virginia, where "the close 
Conference was held for four days. There was great 
strictness observed in the examination of the preach- 
ers' characters. Some were reproved before the 
Conference for their lightness and other follies." 
This extract from his journal gives us a glimpse into 
the usages of those times which have long since 
passed away. There was no open session. There 
was but little to do except to examine character, 
and it was done with rigid strictness. The name of 
the preacher was called, and if there was anything 
against him that was the time to speak. The inci- 
dents related by the old preachers show how strict 
they were in their examination of each other. One 
young man was complained of because he had put 
on a girl's bonnet, and asked if she was not a pretty 
girl; one had shaved on Sunday, and one had not 
shaved off all his beard; one wore a dress coat; one 
was too light in his conversation, and one was too 
dressy in apparel — these as well as more serious 

(205) 



206 Francis Asbury. 

things were brought out in these secret sessions; 
but as a general thing there was commendation, 
rather than censure. Philip Bruce, Jesse Lee, Jon- 
athan Jackson, and Nicholas Snethen, a thundering 
legion, were preaching from the pulpit to the great 
crowds that came to Conference "while this secret 
session" was being held, and there was, the bishop 
said, "a great shaking." As soon as this Conference 
was over the bishop and his companions were on 
their way to the next Conference which met in Bal- 
timore. This was Asbury' s favorite Conference, the 
strongest and best of them all. All the quarterage 
this year was paid, three thousand souls had been 
added to the society, money was raised to buy horses 
for poor preachers, and donations made to those who 
had long distances to go. 

It was while he was in Baltimore that he received 
the account of his dear mother's death. He had left 
her thirty-one years before, and he had never gone 
back to see her again. She had fully surrendered 
him to his work, nor asked him to leave it. He had 
not neglected his old parents, but had ministered to 
them. His letters had been regular and his remit- 
tances as generous as he had been able to make 
them. She died January 8, 1802, aged eighty-seven 
or eighty-eight years. 

The Philadelphia Conference had been in some 
trouble. The golden days when Churches will be 
always at peace are to come yet; they had not come 
in 1802. Asbury was delighted, however, when the 
difficulty, of which we know nothing, was settled. 
His tour northward led him into New England again, 
and he went as far north as New Hampshire. He 



Francis As bury. 207 

was not a little indignant that Methodists had to 
pay tax for the support of the standing order, not 
perhaps considering the fact that this compulsory 
support of the Congregational clergy was doing not 
a little to drive men into the Methodist fold. He 
came by his old friend Garrettson's on the Hudson, 
who had the most elegant home of any Methodist 
preacher on the continent, and returning to the south 
he took Nicholas Snethen, whom he had had as a 
traveling companion the year before, as his associ- 
ate again, and made his way to the Valley of Vir- 
ginia. In passing through Winchester, as he was 
going southward, he heard that James O'Kelly w r as 
in the village and was sick. Asbury sent him word 
that he would call and see him if it w T as agreeable, 
and the two old men met once more. They made no 
allusion to differences. Asbury prayed for his old 
friend, and they parted to meet no more on earth. 

He now moved up the valley, preaching as he 
went. It w r as a time of revival, and nothing so de- 
lighted him as lively, noisy meetings, and they w r ere 
to be found all along the route. He w 7 ent on through 
Botetourt to the Salt Works, where, he said, there 
was a little salt, but when sister Russell was gone 
he thought there w 7 ould be a deficiency. Then he 
entered the Holston country, preaching every day. 
Near Jonesboro, Tennessee, he attended a camp 
meeting. William McKendree, who was the presid- 
ing elder of the Western District, now 7 joined him 
and accompanied him tow 7 ard the Conference, which 
was to meet at Station Camp, in Roane county. They 
had to camp out in the woods, and lying too far from 
the camp fire, he caught cold, and as a result his 



208 FllANCIS As BURY. 

throat became involved. He was soon a very sick 
inan,but McKendree nursed him tenderly. He grew 
worse, rheumatism followed, and sick as he was they 
were forced to camp in the mountains. McKendree 
made a tent for him out of his blankets, where he 
caught a little sleep. By an unfortunate accident 
he was hurt severely in his feet, and was unable to 
get on or off his horse without help. McKendree 
lifted him like a sick child in his arms and bore him 
into the houses at which they stopped, but despite 
it all that unconquerable man preached at a meeting 
appointed for him. At Justice Huffaker's he heard 
that Snethen had gone to fill his appointments in 
Georgia, and he then consented to rest a week. Then 
he clambered over the mountains, and with incredi- 
ble difficulty reached South Carolina and came to 
Rembert's, where he remained for ten days, and here 
spent the closing days of the year 1802. McKen- 
dree, who accompanied him on this tour a consider- 
able part of the way, was his trusted corps command- 
er; and a few years before when Francis Poythress 
lost his mental balance, Asbury had ordered him to 
Kentucky. He went just in time. That wonderful 
revival which marks the close of the last century 
and the beginning of this had just begun when he 
reached the. field. Never was there a greater de- 
mand for a cool head and a strong arm, and McKen- 
dree had them in a high degree. We shall see him 
often in the future. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

1803. 

The South Carolina Conference — Scotch in North Carolina — 
Mr. Meredith's Work in Wilmington — Cumberland Street 
Church in Norfolk— Northward Journey — Merchandise of 
Priests in Boston— Southward Again— Trip to Ohio— Ken- 
tucky— Dr. Hinde and His Blister — Journey to Charleston — 
Conference at Augusta. 

THE South Carolina Conference met at Camden 
in January, 1803. It met on Saturday, and re- 
mained in session till Wednesday. This had been a 
year of great revivals, and over three thousand had 
united with the Church in the bounds of this Confer- 
ence. Asbury read the appointments, as was his cus- 
tom, and then mounted his horse and rode immedi- 
ately away. He went at once to Charleston, and 
after a few days there, with his companions took the 
oft-traveled road through Georgetown and through 
the pines of South Carolina into North Carolina. 
Snethen, young, vigorous, and eloquent, did most of 
the preaching; but the bishop preached now and 
then, and generally on "Christian Perfection," which 
he was still striving to attain. He says : "I feel it my 
duty to speak chiefly on perfection, and above all to 
strive to attain that which I preach." Through mud 
and cold, preaching in houses open as a sieve, they 
made their way in the pine forests of North Carolina. 
After the battle of Culloden, in Scotland, many of 
the malcontented Highlanders who were on that ill- 
fated field were exiled to the colony of North Caro- 
14 (209) 



210 Francis Asbury. 

lina, and in Bladen, Robinson, and Cumberland coun- 
ties they bad their homes. They had ministers of 
the Kirk, from Scotland, to preach to them. They 
read their Gaelic Bibles and sang their Gaelic hymns. 
They were a thrifty, religious people, and prospered. 
In Fayetteville they had a strong hold. Here, 
through the agency of Henry Evans, a colored man, 
the Methodists had not only gathered a society of 
blacks and a few whites, but they had built a small 
chapel. In Wilmington, also, Mr. Meredith had 
gathered a society of seven hundred blacks and i 
few whites, and a little two-room parsonage was 
built on the church lot. The negroes here hired 
their time of their masters, and were growing in 
wealth. At this time (1896), nearly a hundred years 
since Asbury preached there, not only have the 
whites several handsome churches, but the descend- 
ants of these negroes have some of the largest and 
handsomest churches in the city. 

They rode for miles through slashes, or through 
wild pine forests with now and then a cabin, and at 
night lodged in the humble home of some poor set- 
tler. The bishop evidently found the people of On- 
slow county, through which he passed, rather hard 
to move, for he says: "I conclude I shall have no 
more appointments between Wilmington and New 
Berne. There is a description of people we must not 
preach to. The people of Onslow seem to resemble 
the ancient Jews, 'they please not God, and are con- 
trary to all men.' " 

In New Berne they rested for a few days, then 
went northward. "In Williamston there were twen- 
ty families, in Tarborough there were thirty-three, 



Francis As bury. 211 

and the people had more trade than religion. In 
Halifax there was a decent and respectable congre- 
gation from the forty families there.'' The Confer- 
ence met at Drorngoole's, in Virginia, and after a 
Session of five days closed in great peace. There 
was preaching out of doors, although it was in 
March. Whatcoat, then quite a feeble man, was 
with him on this tour. 

Then eastward they rode to Norfolk and Ports- 
mouth. He says: "The new church in Cumberland 
street, Norfolk, is the best in Virginia belonging to 
our society. The pulpit is high, with a witness, like 
that awkward thing in Baltimore, calculated for the 
gallery, and high at that.'' In Petersburg he found 
them building a new church, sixty by forty, and two 
stories high. He went now to Baltimore, stopping 
as usual on the way to preach as often as possible. 
The Conference met in Baltimore April 1; there was 
preaching three times every day. After the ses- 
sion he went to Perry Hall, and then made a short 
visit to his old friends in Harford, and through 
storms of wind and snow on through northern Mary- 
land to the eastern shore. He stops long enough to 
say: "My mind is in a great calm. I have felt much 
self-possession; indeed, age, grace, and the weight of 
responsibility of one of the greatest charges upon 
earth, ought to make me serious. In addition to this 
charge of superintendence, I strive to feel and live 
perfect love." 

As he went through the eastern shore on his way 
to the meeting of the Philadelphia Conference, which 
met at Duck Creek, he could not but rejoice in the 
changes which had passed over that section since 



212 Francis As bury. 

he had first entered it. He loved the eastern shore 
of Maryland, and as long as he lived paid it an an- 
nual visit, and now he saw everywhere the fruits 
of his early labors. The Conference met at Duck 
Creek town, and in a Quaker meetinghouse. He 
seems to have had an unusual rest from bodily af- 
fliction for some time, but when he reached Duck 
Creek town he had to submit to tooth-drawing, ca- 
thartics, and bleeding; but despite it all he sat in 
the Conference for the four days of its session. Ear- 
ly in May he left for New York, and preached in his 
old church home at John Street, and took legal steps 
to secure a legacy made by Miss De Peyster. 

Without any special adventure he reached Con- 
necticut. If the Methodists were now disposed to 
fret at the legal support given to the clergy of the 
standing order, the Baptists were not so submissive, 
and supposing the Methodists would join with them, 
they sent a request to Asbury and Whatcoat to pe- 
tition the legislature for relief. But Asbury said: 
"We are neither popes nor politicians; let our breth- 
ren assert their own liberties." 

At length he reached Boston, where, with eighteen 
members present, the New England Conference met 
in the solitary little chapel. Joshua Soule was or- 
dained an elder at this Conference. The great want 
of Boston, Asbury said, was "good religion and good 
water; but how can this city and Massachusetts be 
in any other than a melancholy state — worse, per- 
haps, for true piety than any other part of the Un- 
ion? What! reading priests and alive! no; dead, 
by nature, by formality, by sin." "I will not men- 
tion names, but I could tell of a congregation which 



Francis Asbury. 213 

sold their priest to another in Boston for one thou- 
sand dollars and hired the money out at the unlaw- 
ful interest of twenty-five or thirty per cent. Lord, 
have mercy upon the priest and people who can 
think of buying the kingdom of heaven with money! 
How would it tell in the south that priests were 
among the notions of Yankee traffic ?" This priest 
thus disposed of was the father of Ralph Waldo Em- 
erson. It is evident that Mr. Asbury did not have a 
high estimate of New England piety; and between 
the contempt of the standing order for the fanatical 
Methodists, and the want of faith which the Metho- 
dists had in the standing order, there was but little 
room to choose. Jesse Lee began fifteen years be- 
fore the work of hammering away on the Saybrook 
platform, and there had now followed him a body of 
sterling young men who were doing the same work; 
and despite the fact of the establishment and its 
taxes, the societies grew and the preachers multi- 
plied. There were among them Sylvester Hutchin- 
son, Martin Ruter, Joshua Soule, Daniel Ostrander, 
and Elijah Hedding. They had been distributed in 
all parts of the New England states, and were win- 
ning their way more and more each year. At this 
time New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut had 
not been drawn upon by the richer fields of Ohio and 
the farther west, and Asbury found the rural sections 
full of sturdy people who lived in solid comfort. It 
must be said in justice to New England that the good 
bishop was a little given to somewhat harsh judg- 
ments upon Calvinists and a well-paid clergy, and 
that he had little use for read sermons, and was a 
very Quaker in his dislike of steeples and bells. 



214 Francis As bury. 

From New England he came through New York back 
to Philadelphia, where he made ready for his jour- 
ney to the far west. He turned his face to the west 
and passed through the lower tier of counties in 
Pennsylvania. Henry Boehm, a German, whose fa- 
ther, Martin Boehm, had been driven from the Men 
nonites because of his pietist views, and who had 
joined the Methodists, went with him as a traveling 
companion, preaching in German to his countrymen, 
of whom there were many. The bishop says of this 
part of Pennsylvania in which they were now trav- 
eling: "I feel and have felt for thirty -two years for 
Pennsylvania, the most wealthy, and the most care- 
less of God and the things of God, but I hope God 
will shake the state and the churches. There are 
now upward of twenty German preachers; some have 
connected with Mr. Otterbein and Martin Boehm, 
but they want authority and the Church wants disci- 
pline." In Pittsburg the Methodists had no church, 
and he preached in the courthouse. 

Poor Whatcoat, who had been with him, was not 
able to go farther, and the saintly and useful Wil- 
son Lee was compelled also to leave him; but Asbury 
went on his way with young Boehm, crossing 
through Ohio county, Virginia, into the new state 
of Ohio. He was himself suffering with dysentery, 
and the journey was a trying one, but he kept on his 
way. In Ohio the Church was making rapid prog- 
ress. Governor Edward Tiffin was a Methodist and 
a local preacher. Asbury visited him, and on the 
28th of September crossed the Ohio River into Ken- 
tucky. He passed rapidly to Mount Gerizim, where 
the Kentucky Conference was to hold its session. 



Francis As bury. 215 

Here the Western Conference, which embraced the 
Holston, the Middle Tennessee, and the Kentucky 
and Ohio country, held its session. McKendree was 
in charge of the Kentucky District, and men like 
William Burke, Thomas Wilkerson, Lewis Garrett, 
James Gwin, Tobias Gibson, Jesse Walker, and Hen- 
ry Smith were among the workers. It was a time 
of revival, and there was preaching every day, and 
twenty souls were converted. Asbury was quite un- 
well, but he pressed on, passing through Paris, Ken- 
tucky, which had in it even then about four hundred 
houses and a stone preaching house of the Presby- 
terians. He visited Dr. Hinde, the grandfather of 
Bishop Kavanaugh, once a surgeon under General 
Wolfe, and an infidel. The doctor had married into 
a Virginia family, and when his wife was awakened 
among the Methodists, he had blistered her head to 
cure her of her madness; but he was converted, and 
was now a Methodist. The highways were crowded 
with travelers, and while they may have broken the 
spell "of loneliness they by no means improved the 
character of the roads, and as he returned Asbury 
found the way through the Gap into Tennessee but 
little better than when he came over it the first time 
fifteen years before. He could endure a great deal 
of discomfort without complaint; indeed, one has to 
know much of the times and of the topography of 
the country in order to realize what he did endure, 
but the story of his hardships will sometimes come 
out in his narrative. Stopping now at a house un- 
finished and filled with brutal travelers, and then in 
a little house ten by twelve feet in size, where there 
were within a man and his wife and six children — 



216 Francis As bury. 

one of them always in motion — and without there 
were rain and wind; sleeping in beds from which he 
contracted a royal but rather nameless disorder, 
against which a brimstone shirt was his only protec- 
tion, and then pushing across the mountains, over 
the worst road in America, he at last reached a rest- 
ing place; but he says, "My soul is tranquil, the air 
is pure, and the house of God is near." The remain- 
der of the trying journey was through the moun- 
tains of Tennessee and North Carolina until he final- 
ly reached father John Douthat's, in South Carolina, 
where he bade farewell for awhile, as he said, to the 
"filth, fleas, rattlesnakes, hills, mountains, rocks, 
and rivers." He now went across the western part 
of South Carolina, and going through Greenville, 
Laurens, and Richland counties, he came into Colum- 
bia, like an Indian chief, with his blanket around 
him to protect him from rain, and went to John Har- 
per's, in whose house he held a family union, preach- 
ing to a respectable body of hearers. The South 
Carolina Conference was to meet in Augusta, but, 
as always, he visited Charleston, and now took pos- 
session of the parsonage, the first in the South Caro- 
lina Conference; or, as he calls it, "the new house 
built for the preacher, near the new chapel." This 
little parsonage is described by Bishop Andrew in 
his "Reminiscences": "The old, odd-shaped house de- 
fying all sorts of architectural style, was a house of 
shreds and patches, and stood almost touching Beth- 
el church. Below stairs was the dining-room stuck 
up in one corner; at the other you went into the yard, 
from a little cuddy in which was the water pail; but 
the grand room of the lower story was the Confer- 



F RAX CIS As BURT. 217 

ence room. In this was transacted all the business 
of the session. Here you met every week either 
stewards or leaders, white or black; and here the 
preachers had to hare all cases of complaints or tri- 
al, especially among the blacks; and to this room 
also came, at stated intervals, all w r ho wished to join 
on trial. Here Asbury had prayer at sunrise for all 
who came." 

After a two weeks' rest in Charleston, he made 
his way by the old route to Augusta, where the South 
Carolina Conference was to hold its session, which 
it did in the January following. Among the exiles 
from Hayti was a Frenchman, Peter Cantalou. He 
became a Protestant and a Methodist, and at his 
home the Conference was held. As there was a 
month between the Conferences, Asbury went up 
the country and made an extensive tour through all 
the settled portions of the state. He was enter- 
tained in Louisville by Mr. Flournoy. He speaks of 
Flournoy as a new convert. Alas! his conversion 
was not of long duration; but his wife, to whom the 
bishop alludes as one of "the respectables," and who 
was one of the famous Cobb family, long continued 
to bless the Church by a beautiful and saintly life. 
She was the aunt of Howell Cobb, and the grand- 
mother of Kev. H. J. Adams, and a kinswoman of 
Chief Justice Jackson. Bishop Coke had joined As- 
bury in Augusta, and they were together for the ses- 
sion of the Conference, which began on January 4, 
1804. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

1804. 

Conference in Augusta — Reasons for Never Marrying — Journey 
Northward — General Conference — Slavery Question Again — 
Confined by Sickness — Letter to Hitt — Journey to the West, 
and Thence to Charleston. 

THE new year began with the meeting of the 
South Carolina Conference in the home of Pe- 
ter Cantalou, on Ellis street in Augusta. It opened 
its session on Monday and closed on Thursday, and 
the next Monday Asbury reached Camden, where, at 
the house of one of his brethren (probably Isaac 
Smith's), he parted with Dr. Coke, giving him a plan 
for a journey as far as Boston before the General 
Conference met in May. After a week in Camden 
he began his tour to the east by riding to James 
Rembert's, where he rested for a week, and then 
went as far south as Georgetown. After years of 
hard work in Georgetown, there were only twenty 
whites in the society, but there were four hundred 
blacks. Mr. Hammett had built a church there 
which now fell into the hands of Asbury, as had the 
churches in Charleston and Wilmington. With 
Alex. McCaine as a traveling companion, he went 
northward. 

He was now sixty years old. He had decided never 

to marry, and when he was in Georgetown he wrote 

in his journal the reason for this final decision. He 

was twentv-six vears old when he came to America, 

' (218) 



Francis Asbury. 219 

and it had not been a proper thing to marry up to 
that time. He expected to return to England in five 
years, but it was ten years before his return could be 
considered, because of the war. Then he was chosen 
bishop. His duties demanded constant travel, and 
he could not think it w r as just or kind for him to mar- 
ry one whom he must leave for so much of the time. 
His salary w T as small; his mother needed all the help 
he could give her, and he was an old man when she 
died. He hoped God and the sex would forgive him 
if he had done wrong in thus remaining unmarried. 

His journey into South and North Carolina was 
through the counties on the coast. He visited Wil- 
mington, New Berne, Washington, Edenton, and 
Elizabeth City — w r here there was as yet no home for 
the Methodists — and through Norfolk and Suffolk 
back into the circuit he had traveled thirty years be- 
fore to Salem, in Mecklenburg, where the Virginia 
Conference held its session. The Baltimore Confer- 
ence was to meet in Alexandria, and he rode direct- 
ly through the midland counties of Virginia to its 
place of session. The new church was then built, 
and he preached in it, and after a short session the 
Conference adjourned. The General Conference 
was to meet in May. Asbury had little taste for 
changes of any kind, and he did not relish these 
quadrennial sessions when the Discipline w^as to be 
revised from beginning to end. He was sorry w 7 hen 
the Conference assembled and relieved when it ad- 
journed. 

The presiding eldership had not given perfect sat- 
isfaction, and there w r ere attempts made, he said, 
"upon the ruling eldership." He says, "We had 



220 Francis As bub r. 

great talk." It is the province of the historian to 
tell of the doings of this Conference, which was one 
of the last general conventions which was held. This 
Conference consisted of one hundred and twelve 
members, and the inequality of the representation 
is seen by the figures: The Boston Conference, four; 
Virginia Conference, seventeen; Baltimore Confer- 
ence, twenty-nine; Philadelphia Conference, forty- 
one; New York Conference, twelve. 

Dr. Coke was present. Asbury, according to the 
journals, made several motions: first, that the doors 
should be kept closed; second, that an assistant book 
agent should be chosen ; and third, that the Annual 
Conferences should be advised to restrict the preach- 
ers from preaching improper matter. 

The Conference desired that he should assist in 
forming a chapter on slavery to suit northern and 
southern sections. Asbury knew the absurdity of 
the proposition, and decided to have no part in it. 
A committee attempted it, and egregiously failed. 
Up to this time there had been no limit to the bish- 
op's authority to appoint preachers for as long a 
time as he chose, but George Dougherty moved that 
a time limit be fixed, and it was decided that it should 
be at two years. The General Conference of 1800 
had been the revival Conference, and Asbury hoped 
for the same gracious results at this one, but was 
sadly disappointed. 

As soon as the Conference was over he left for 
the Philadelphia Conference. It sat five days and a 
half, and the bishop then started on his journey to 
New York. For years the faithful animal who bore 
him was a mare whom he called "Little Jane," and 






Francis As bury. 221 

to whom he was tenderly attached. On this journey 
he says: "Here my little. Jane was horned by a cow 
and was lamed. She is done, perhaps, forever for 
me, but it may be all for the best. I am unwell, the 
weather is bad, but except my feelings for the poor 
beast I am peaceful and resigned. I was able to 
write but not to preach on the Sabbath." Poor lit- 
tle Jane ! How many weary miles had she borne the 
faithful apostle, and how tender was his love for her! 
We cannot but hope that the ignominious wound was 
not fatal; that Jane had greener pastures and an 
easier life than she had had in days gone by. 

Procuring another Jane, he went on his way to 
New York and into New England. The constant 
travel on horseback and the very hot weather of June 
were trying to him, but not so much so as the trials 
of his office. He was very sensitive, and felt keenly 
the misjudgments and censures of some of those with 
whom he had to do. He could not give satisfaction 
to many, and they poured upon his head their vials of 
wrath. "O man! thou hidest thy face and changest 
thy voice," he says, "and I must be troubled forsooth. 
But I am just as serene as ever as to what man can 
say or do. Whom shall I trust? Why, who but a 
good and true and never-failing God." His journey 
through New England was by much the same route; 
through Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, 
and over the rough hills of New Hampshire and Ver- 
mont back into New York. It was a very fatiguing 
journey, and he says, "I suffered from hunger and 
was skinned several times." He had spent fifteen 
dollars in traveling from the 20th of June to the 27th 
of July. This was to him a very heavy outlay, and 



222 Francis As bury. 

seemed extravagant. He rarely had a bill to pay in 
the south, and but few in the west, and this outlay 
for food for man and beast seemed to him to be very 
extraordinary. He came on rapidly through Penn- 
sylvania and upper Delaware, and by September was 
in the west of Pennsylvania, riding over the steep 
hills of Wayne county; but it was not in the power 
of his feeble frame to bear up under all, and he was 
forced to yield. For thirty days he was in a sick 
room. In the kind family of Harry Stevens he was 
attended by two doctors, who at last happily left him 
to himself. They were seldom right in their treat- 
ment, he said, and medicines were not to be had. 
He was not able to travel, but travel he must, and he 
began his farther journey to the west. Riding 
brought on a fever and cough. Whatcoat, feeble too, - 
was with him, and the self-sacrificing Asbury gave 
him his easier riding horse and took Whatcoat's 
jolting steed. They could not hope to reach the 
Kentucky Conference, and barely hoped to get to 
the South Carolina in time. Whatcoat persisted in 
going into the west, and Asbury wrote Daniel Hitt, 
who was on a district in Ohio : 

Phelps's, November 7, 1804. 
My Dear Daniel: You will be surprised to hear of my pass- 
ing this way. I have been sick upon Monongahela and Ohio 
about sixty days. I must needs preach at Union and Jacob 
Murphey's; ride twelve miles through the hot sun, and some 
rain. This brought on a chill and burning fever every day, 
with a most inveterate cough. I used emetics, two ; the sec- 
ond cleared me. I was bled four times, and blistered four. 
I was part of my time at Harry Stevens's, and two weeks at 
Beck's. I had no intermission, but only a remission, for 
fifty days. I gave up my visit to the eastern, Brother What- 






Francis As bury. 223 

coat came up wrth me, and stayed till two days of my recov- 
ery. I came off as soon as the Indian summer came on. I 
came from Beck's (from Sabbath to Sabbath) to Cresap's. 
I am now on my way to Charleston. I must make the best 
of good weather. I have written to appoint a president; I 
believe it will come to that in time. I am in no doubt or 
fear but the connection will do as well or better without me 
as with me. The president elders have more local knowl- 
edge; they have more personal information of the preachers 
and circuits. I only go because it is my appointment from 
the Conference, and to cast in my mite; and I cannot be idle. 

I am happy to find the work of God is reviving to the west- 
ward. I shall be pleased to have a narrative of the work in 
this district. God certainly has a controversy with this land. 
Many that will not be mended will be ended, or mended and 
ended both. America is the infant of Divine Providence. 
He must begin to correct — he will correct us himself; he will 
not let others do it. I make no doubt there is not a single 
spot but will feel in time (arid turn) the rod of God. The 
sinners in the cities are not sinners above all the Galileans. 
I anticipated the pleasure of seeing you; but time is short: 
I must improve every hour of fair weather and sun. 

I am, as ever, thine, F. Asbury. 

He received constant kindness from everybody, 
for, go whither he would, he was never among stran- 
gers. He was now, perhaps, the best known and 
the most beloved man in America. While he was at 
Cokesbury he had to punish a refractory student. 
Thirty years had gone, and as he passed near him he 
called to see him. He says: "We rode to James 
Cresap's. Notwithstanding what passed at Cokes- 
bury, he received me as a father. That matter might 
have been better managed. We were to have all 
the boys to become angels. John Hesselins sent me 
a note of invitation to see him. I did so. He re- 
minded me of his respectable father who took me to 



224 Francis As bury. 

his house thirty years ago, in the time I was exposed 
to daily reproach and contempt." 

The bishop made the journey by the most direct 
route to Charleston, and without incident reached 
there better, despite his fatigue and exposure, than 
when he started from Pennsylvania, the 10th of Oc- 
tober. When one takes into consideration the char- 
acter of the roads, and the feebleness of the man, and 
the greatness of the distance, he is amazed at the 
fact that the journey was made. 






CHAPTER XXXII. 

1805. 

Journey Northward — Letter to Hitt — Conference in North Car- 
olina—Episcopal Trials — Journey to the North — Journey to 
the West and the South. 

THE Conference at Charleston, which was the 
beginning of the series, met January 1, 1805. 
The bishop was feeble, but was able to preach, and 
after resting a week and preparing the minutes for 
publication, he began his tour. In a month's time 
he was to meet with the Virginia brethren at Tay- 
lor's, in Granville county, Xorth Carolina. He and 
his companions nearly always chose a different route 
for each return northward, and he now made his way 
through the high waters and over the wretched 
causeways through eastern South Carolina and into 
eastern Xorth Carolina. The ferries were numerous 
and the boats were very poor. Sometimes the trav- 
elers had to swim their horses, and in doing so wet 
their own limbs; sometimes they crossed in a canoe 
with their horses swimming beside them. The ferry- 
boats were shackling, and more than once they were 
in great danger. Poor, aged, feeble Whatcoat suf- 
fered much, and the chronic trouble which torment- 
ed him was fearfully aggravated by this exposure. 
Asbury himself was bleeding at the lungs, but, de- 
spite all this, he kept in motion and kept the work 
going. Wherever there was a place which needed a 
preacher, and a preacher could be had, Asbury or- 
15 (225) 



226 Francis As bub r. 

dered him there. The battle was at its height. Re- 
vivals were everywhere, and never had such success 
attended the evangelical labors of the itinerants. At 
that time the pastoral relation, as it at present ex- 
ists, was hardly known. Every preacher was an 
evangelist, and every nerve was strained to keep up 
with the demand for aggressive work. The leading 
spirit who directed all these movements, the general 
commanding this army, was this feeble old man of 
sixty years, breaking down with fatigue, but still 
clear-headed and untiring. When he reached Fay- 
etteville, North Carolina, where the Presbyterians 
were strong and the Methodists weak, Dr. Flinn, the 
Presbyterian minister, politely asked the good bish- 
op to take his pulpit, which he as politely declined. 
He was offered the statehouse, but refused it. Hen- 
ry Evans, a most remarkable negro, had built a plain, 
homely church, which was known as the African 
meetinghouse, and in it Asbury preached. While in 
the low lands near Wilmington he was riding 
through a rice plantation when he came to an un- . 
bridged canal. The negro overseer came and made 
a way for them to cross, and Asbury found, to his 
delight, that he was one of the Methodist sheep. 
The housekeeper gladly received the bishop into the 
hospitable home of the absent planter. The poor 
people, black and white, who formed the Wilming- 
ton congregation had built, Asbury said, an elegant 
meetinghouse, sixty-six by thirty-six feet in dimen-^ 
sion. At New Berne he wrote to Daniel Hitt : 

New Berne, N. C, Jan. 26th, 1805. 
My Dear Daniel: May the spirit of holy Daniel and a holy 
God fill thy soul! I received thy two letters at too late a 
period to be answered from Charleston. I found it proper 



Fbancis Asbury. 227 

to move as soon as Conference expired. God is good to me. 
I found, as I proceeded southward, my health increased. To 
niy joy, I found brother Whatcoat had returned from the 
western states in good health — all things in good order, al- 
most everything done my letter anticipated; but my letter 
not received till after the Conference; increase of eighteen 
preachers in the Kentucky Conference; two thousand mem- 
bers: South Conference, eleven preachers, few located; in- 
crease of members, fifteen hundred, notwithstanding the 
deaths and great removals to the west, whose membership 
must be suspended for a time. We had great love and union, 
but little money. I believe the Conference in the south was 
near one thousand dollars insolvent. Our married men 
sweep us off in the circuits, and share a great part of the 
bounty of two hundred and sixty dollars, Charter, and Book 
Concern. Yet such is the consequence of the work: we em- 
ploy all we judge worthy. I calculate upon twenty thousand 
added to the societies, and twenty thousand dollars insol- 
vency. We must not have gold and grace. God will give 
us souls for wages. We overseers find this the very nick of 
time, in the winter season, to visit the seaports: these give us 
an opportunity of preaching to hundreds of the inhabitants 
of the sea. Our town stands are of great magnitude: by be- 
ing present, I feel their importance, especially when we can 
get the Jews and Gentiles to work it right. I find it matter 
of very great heartfelt concern to settle the frontiers of the 
sea, as well as the frontiers of the east, west, and north. We 
have the following towns which call for stationed preachers: 
Augusta, Columbia, Camden, Georgetown — yes, oh that I 
could command Savannah also! In the North State, Fay- 
etteville, Raleigh, Wilmington, New Berne, Washington, 
Edenton, poor Halifax, then Portsmouth, Norfolk, Peters- 
burg, Richmond, and some others; for when we can come 
at a square of two miles, and two thousand souls, it is an 
object that we shall not perhaps find in a circuit; besides 
comers and goers, as we generally say. We gain in this 
town, upon Trent, a dark place. A poor old local preacher 
labored and preached till he was called home: now God has 
visited his children and neighbors; one hundred souls have 
been brought in. The work grows in Georgia and the Car- 



228 F BANC is As BURY. 

olinas. I can see a surprising difference everywhere since 
the year 1785. Oh, what prospects open in 1805! I am 
lengthy; I am loving; you are liberal in writing to me. You 
have my letter that was lost by this time. I have a letter 
from Joshua Taylor informing me of the success of our Con- 
ference in the Maine — of a camp meeting and several happy 
seasons in the Maine. Glory! I thank you for the printed 
account. I have a written one from Billy Thacher. 

The famous Abner Wood is turned Baptist from stem to 
stern. He was going on till they suspended him preaching 
Baptist-like upon the New London Circuit: now our Dis- 
cipline is a human invention: Jocelin is rebaptized. See our 
great Conference men. We must have some drawbacks. 

They judged the camp meeting near Suffolk was the great- 
est ever known. Four hundred professed in four days. Bal- 
timore and the Point look up. The fire of God is broken 
out in the city of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia) : near one 
hundred souls converted. God's thoughts are not as ours, nor 
his ways as our ways. I received a long letter from brother 
Willis. I have only to add, he and myself have served the 
Church, the one above forty years, local and traveling, the 
other between twenty and thirty. We must leave the gov- 
ernment to younger men now. You know my thoughts on 
the local eldership ; they are yours. As to any valuable ends 
he contemplates, I can see none in his letter that might not 
be answered, as to their usefulness; but a judicious presiding^ 
elder might secure. The South Conference wrote a letter to 
the trustees of the Charter Fund, applauding gratitude for 
their attention. By brother Cooper a letter is sent that they 
are well under way in York, and much work on hand. At 
least I am happily disappointed, he is gone to York to stay. 
I am always pleased to be disappointed for the best. B. 
Jones, Gibson, N. Watters, and W. Lee, all I have heard of 
the deaths. Now, brother, perfect love; live it, preach it. 
I have marked the kindling of a fire in the Latin and Greek 
Churches, so called, the French and Russians, the British 
at the bottom. I saw it some time, but it is likely to break 
out: it will probably involve the whole world. What can 
we say? Let us make haste to promote the work of God. Tt 
shall be well with the righteous. I am thine, F. Asbtjry. 



Francis Asbury. 229 

From New Berne he went on his northern journey, 
in company with poor What coat, who was suffering 
agony at times with that physical ill that at last took 
him off. There had been a great deal of rain and 
there were heavy floods, but they managed to reach 
Norfolk and Portsmouth; and then, through the 
counties in which Methodism had won her first tri- 
umphs, and where Asbury and Whatcoat had both 
traveled for many years, they made their way to 
Granville county, North Carolina. 

While that class of Americans, know r n in these 
days as gentry, had little to do as a common thing 
with the Methodists, there were in every state repre- 
sentatives of the leading families among 7 her ad- 
herents, and Edmond Taylor was one of the best of 
these people. He lived in Granville, and around 
him were other Methodist families of the same char- 
acter, and no doubt at his instance the Virginia Con- 
ference held its session at his home. When the Con- 
ference concluded, Asbury and Whatcoat began their 
journey to Winchester, Virginia, where the Baltimore 
Conference was to meet. The weather was severe, 
the roads w T ere bad, and the route led them directly 
over the Blue Bidge Mountains, but they made the 
journey in time, and Asbury presided over the Con- 
ference. 

He had the usual trials of a Methodist bishop. 
Lawrence McCombs, one of his leading preachers, re- 
fused positively to take his appointment, and had to 
be changed; and at the Philadelphia Conference one 
of the five days of the session was taken up in hear- 
ing an appeal case. 

As he passed through Baltimore on his way to the 



230 Francis As bury. 

east, the bishop preached for the Light-street peo- 
ple, but they were dull of hearing. "He feared the 
people were preached to death." As he did every 
year, he visited Perry Hall. "It had been repainted 
and newly furnished, and the grandchildren were 
gay and playful, but he and his host felt that the 
evening had come to them." Two years after he fol- 
lowed his friend of thirty years to the grave. The 
Philadelphia Conference met at Chestertown, and 
he presided over it, and came on to Philadelphia. 
His lifelong friend, Dr. McGaw, one of the few evan- 
gelicals among the Episcopal clergy, was dying. His 
mind was affected, but his heart was full of joy, and 
Asbury prayed at his bedside. So perfectly dead 
was Asbury to the world that he was sometimes un- 
duly depressed because others did not regard his 
somewhat arbitrary dictates. One of these was that 
there should be vocal prayer after each meal in every 
Methodist home; and he feared, he said, such was his 
poor success, after eighteen years of faithful labor, 
that some Methodists did not do so. "God be gra- 
cious to us and to such families and unfaithful 
souls!" 

The New York Conference met at Ashgrove, New 
York, where Embury died, and after its close the 
bishop went into New England. They went the usu- 
al round, and Asbury made his usual comments, and 
then, with Joseph Crawford as a companion, he 
started to the west. A jersey wagon was purchased 
in Philadelphia, and by the usual difficult route he 
went to Ohio. Ohio was being rapidly peopled, and 
great numbers were crowding the highways. He 
had but entered the state when his traveling com- 



Francis Asbury. 231 

panion was taken seriously ill. Governor Tiffin was 
a local preacher and physician, as well as governor 
of the state, and ministered to the sick preacher, who 
was soon able to go on his journey. Philip Gatch, 
his old associate and his stern antagonist in the sac- 
ramental controversy, had now removed to Ohio, and 
was a leading man in the state. He was still a de- 
voted Methodist and doing much to build up the 
Church, and the two old companions met in these 
wilds. Many of his old Maryland friends had re- 
moved to Ohio, many of his Virginia friends to Ken- 
tucky, and he found himself now in the homes of 
those whose grandfathers he had received into the 
societies in the east. The journey through Ohio was 
made with difficulty, but it was at last made, and he 
reached the Conference at Mount Gerizim, in Ken- 
tucky. He had not been able to meet these frontier 
preachers the year before, but in the hands of the 
matchless McKendree the work had not suffered. 
The heroic band of twenty-five received their ap- 
pointments, and then by a new, but by no means an 
improved, route they came southward. There was 
but little that was unusual in their journey to South 
Carolina and into Georgia, and despite this constant 
journeying, Asbury found time to read Judge Mar- 
shall's Life of Washington, which he greatly en- 
joyed. When he reached Charleston, many colored 
people came to see him, and he had prayer with all 
who came. The Conference was to meet at Camden, 
and on the 30th of December the two bishops came 
into Camden. Asbury had met every appointment 
and had traveled the entire circuit, going from the 
frontiers of Georgia to the borders of Maine, and 



232 Francis Asbury. 

from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. He had been 
wonderfully strong and cheerful. For some time 
his spiritual conflicts and his conflicts with depres- 
sion seem to have ceased. Doubting Castle had 
been left far behind. There was no question now 
that he was filled with pure love, and his soul was 
flooded with constant peace. 

The work had been so wonderful and was going 
forward with such great rapidity that his heart 
was cheered with the good news of victory. The 
preachers were true 'and heroic, the people respon- 
sive, and he was now strangely well, and while all 
the burden of the bishopric rested on him he had 
been able to bear up under it; but it was evidently 
impossible that this heavy labor could be long con- 
tinued, and it became evident to him, as to others, 
that the episcopacy must be strengthened. Dr. 
Coke was nominally a bishop, but his relationship 
was merely nominal. Whatcoat was an invalid, and 
on the shoulders of Asbury rested the w r hole burden. 
He felt the weight, but bravely bent himself to the 
work before him. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

1806. 

Asbury Alone — Coke Offers to Come to America — Offer De- 
clined — Camp Meetings in the East — Whatcoat's Death — 
Western Tour — Southern Tour. 

THE Conferences of the year 1806 began with 
South Carolina, which the bishop called the 
South Conference. The condition of things was 
anomalous. There were apparently three bishops — 
Coke, Asbury, and Whatcoat — and there was in fact 
but one. THiatcoat was superannuated, Coke was 
in England, and on Asbury alone all the labor ex- 
cept that of travel rested. Coke had married a rich 
wife of deep piety, and w r as willing now to return 
to America to stay all the time. At least he thought 
he was, but the fact was he could not have remained 
in any one place long. He would not have been con- 
tent had he come to America, but he wrote to the 
preachers that he was willing under certain condi- 
tions to come and remain. 

As there w T as no General Conference in session, 
this letter was presented to the Annual Conferences 
for their consideration. Asbury said of the way in 
which it was received at Baltimore: "An answer was 
given to Dr. Coke's letter, I fear in a manner that 
will not please him. An order was passed that the 
answer should be presented to all the Annual Con- 
ferences. It was also recommended to the Annual 
Conferences to consider on the propriety of having 

(233) 



234 Francis As bury. 

a select delegated Conference. The eastern, western, 
and southern Conferences were counseled to take 
such measures as they in theirwisdom might see best, 
to produce a more equal representation from their 
several bodies to the General Conference." The 
Conference did not recall Dr. Coke then, and never 
did; and while his name remained on the minutes 
they recited the fact that he was permitted to remain 
in England. It will be remembered, however, that 
this was done by the preachers as a body, and not by 
a delegated General Conference. The effort of As- 
bury to have a delegated General Conference pro- 
vided for at this time was defeated, as well as his 
plan to have a select number who should elect an- 
other bishop before the regular General Conference 
of 1808. 

After the Baltimore Conference, Asbury left for 
the Philadelphia Conference, which met in Phila- 
delphia. He made his usual detour through the 
eastern shore country, separated from Whatcoat, 
but met him again in Delaware, and took him in 
his carriage. On the journey the saintly old man 
was taken with a severe illness, and Asbury was 
forced to leave *him. The attack ended fatally; 
Whatcoat died near Dover. 

The Conference at Philadelphia answered Dr. 
Coke's letter in much the way in which it had been 
answered from Baltimore, and so did the Conference 
in New York. This no doubt was very much to As- 
bury's mind. He had little disposition to surrender 
the entire control of any part of the work, which 
had cost him so much, into the hands of anyone; and 
while he loved Dr. Coke very tenderly, he knew him 



Francis Asbury. 235 

too well to be willing voluntarily to step aside, and 
yield place to one in whose judgment lie had so little 
confidence. He went from New York to the New 
England Conference. These New England preach- 
ers had two defects, in his eye; they would get mar- 
ried, and they would stay in town. He says the Con- 
ference sat seven hours a day. The address con- 
cerning a new bishop w T as concurred in, but he adds: 
"We did not, to my grief, tell our experiences, nor 
make observations as to what we had known of the 
work of God; the members were impatient to be 
gone, particularly the married town-men." "Why 
did I not visit this country sooner?" he says again. 
"Ah! what is the toil of beating over rocks, hills, 
mountains, and deserts live thousand miles a year? 
Nothing, when we reflect it is done for God, for 
Christ, for the Holy Spirit, the Church of God, the 
souls of poor sinners, the preachers of the gospel in 
the seven Conferences, one hundred and thirty thou- 
sand members, and one or two millions w r ho congre- 
gate with us in the solemn worship of God. Oh, it 
is nothing." 

tin order to attend the Conferences the preachers, 
we learn from his journal, w r ere absent from their 
work for two or three months. This is only to be 
accounted for by considering the vast distances the 
preachers had to travel on horseback, and even then 
the time taken in the journey seems excessive. 

Camp meetings had now made their way from 
Kentucky to this far east. It is impossible proper- 
ly to estimate the ultimate effect of this accidental 
assemblage in the barrens of Kentucky, and As- 
bury's journals are full of allusions to the great work 



236 Francis As bury. 

wrought at them. He made it his special aim to 
reach as many of them as he possibly could, and he 
visited a number on this tour. As he feared, What- 
coat was dead, and he pays this beautiful tribute to 
the good man's memory: "My faithful friend for 
forty years, who ever heard him speak an idle word? 
when was guile found in his mouth? A man so uni- 
formly good, I have not known in Europe or Amer- 
ica." He turned now to the west. The route he 
took this time was up the Valley of Virginia, through 
Salem and Wytheville, to the widow Russell's, at 
Saltville, where he found the dear old saint as happy 
and cheerful as ever. The route he took to the Hol- 
ston Conference, which met at Ebenezer, on the Nol- 
achucky, was a rough one, and he was not well; but 
he reached the place where the Conference was to 
be held in good time. 

The work of these noble pioneers was still the 
hardest on the continent. He found the poor preach- 
ers ragged, so he parted with his watch, his coat and 
shirt. There were not far from two thousand people 
present on Sunday, and he says: "If good were done, 
which I trust and hope, it is some compensation for 
my sufferings. Thirteen hundred miles in heat and 
sickness on the road, and in the house restless hours, 
the noise of barking dogs, impatient children and 
people trotting about, and opening and shutting 
doors at all hours." 

He was lost on his way through the mountains of 
North Carolina, and had to spend a night in an old 
schoolhouse. He had no fire, and no bed save a bare 
bench. Moses Lawrence, who traveled with him, 
had a bear skin on the floor. 



Francis Asbuby. 237 

In descending the mountains into Rutherford 
county, North Carolina, "one of the descents/' he 
says, "is like the roof of a house for nearly a mile, I 
rode, I walked, I sweat, I trembled; my old knees 
failed. Here are gullies and rocks and precipices." 
He attended a camp meeting in Rutherford, then 
passed on through Lincoln to South Carolina, and 
rested a week at his old home at Rembert Hall. He 
had long since ceased to antagonize siaveholding, as 
much as he disliked it, and realizing the fact that it 
might be an evil for which the proposed remedy of 
immediate emancipation was no cure, he contented 
himself with preaching the gospel to master and 
slave. The idea that Dr. Coke had so pressed — the 
sinfulness of siaveholding under all circumstances — 
he never entertained; and as he grew older, and re- 
alized more and more the difficulties in the w T ay of 
emancipation, he was still less disposed to speak pos- 
itively as to what should be done. Gough, Rembert, 
Grant, Tait, and many others of his most valued 
friends, were large slave owners. In their homes he 
rested, and in their piety he had perfect confidence, 
but he never became reconciled to slavery, and had it 
been in his power he would have ended it speedily. 

On Sunday, November 4, he was in Charleston 
once more. Here he remained over a week, and then 
when to Augusta. The good old bishop was a little 
worried with one of the young preachers. He was 
not exactly pleased when any one differed with him, 
but when that one was a young man he had to be 
looked after. He says: "Hugh Porter had written 
to this town about a station; and added to the mis- 
chief he had formerly done. And behold, here is a 



238 Francis As bury. 

bell over the gallery ! and cracked too ; may it break. 
It is the first I ever saw in a house of ours in America. 
I hope it will be the last." 

He made his usual tour through Georgia, calling 
on his old friends Thomas Grant and Ralph Banks, 
and thence to Judge Charles Tait's. He "did not 
present himself/' he said, "in the character of a gen- 
tleman, but as a Christian, and a Christian minister. 
I won't visit the President of the United States in 
any other character. As to Presbyterian ministers, 
and all ministers of the gospel, I will treat them with 
great respect, and ask no favors of them. To hum- 
ble ourselves before those who think themselves so 
much above the Methodist preachers by worldly hon- 
ors, by learning, and especially by salary, will do 
them no good." The man who was the welcome 
guest of Ridgley, Van Cortlandt, Bassett, Living- 
ston, and Gough, and the friend of Otterbein and 
Jarratt, need scarcely to have feared the charge of 
toadyism because he visited a Georgia judge, and 
treated respectfully Messrs. Cummings and Doak; 
but he was a little sensitive to the lowly estimate in 
which his people were held, as he thought, by the 
Presbyterians. His letters told Lim that the camp 
meetings in Maryland and Delaware were having 
amazing results. Five hundred and twenty-eight 
persons converted at one in Maryland and hundreds 
in Delaware. "But what a rumpus was raised! 
Grand juries in Virginia and Delaware have prose- 
cuted the noisy preachers. Lawyers and doctors 
are in arms. The lives, blood, and livers of the poor 
Methodists are threatened. Poor, crazy sinners, see 
ye not that the Lord is with us?" 



Francis As bury. 239 

The Conference in Georgia met in the village of 
Sparta, and Asbury's favorite scheme of a called 
General Conference went through without serious 
objection, only two opposing. 

The close of this year found him in the heart of 
Georgia. He seems to have been in firmer health 
than at any other period of his life in America. He 
was the sole bishop, and at no time has the episco- 
pacy of the American Church had so precarious a 
tenure. Coke was in Europe. Whatcoat w r as dead, 
and there was no General Conference for a year 
ahead. Upon his life depended more perhaps than 
he himself knew. He w T as, however, sufficient for 
the work demanded, and as soon as the Conference 
closed he made ready for his northward flitting. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

1807. 

Asbury Alone — Journey Northward — Western New York — Vis- 
its Ohio, and Goes Through Kentucky to Georgia — Views on 
Education. 

WHATCOAT was dead, Coke was in Europe, 
Asbury was alone, and the first day of Jan- 
uary, 1807, found him on the road from Augusta mov- 
ing toward Eembert Hall. The weather was very 
cold and the exposure very great, but he made the 
journey in a few days, and found shelter at his old 
friend's house, where he took time to answer his 
letters. The Virginia Conference was to meet early 
in February, in New Berne, North Carolina, and he 
pressed on to meet it. He had now the whole work 
to visit, and he took the easiest and quickest route — 
his oft-traveled way along the tide-water counties 
of North Carolina and Virginia — to Norfolk, where 
he turned westward. He says little of the Virginia 
Conference, and makes no mention of the fact that 
it defeated his plans for a called Conference. 

After its adjournment, through the cold March 
winds, by Petersburg and Fredericksburg, he pushed 
on to Baltimore, where he met the Conference. It 
began its session on Monday, and remained in ses- 
sion till Saturday evening. As soon as it was over 
he visited his friends at Perry Hall, and then made 
his usual visitation to the eastern shore, going as far 
down as Accomac, and thence through Delaware to 
(240) 



Francis As bury, 241 

Philadelphia, where he held the Philadelphia Con- 
ference. 

The New York Conference met at Coeyinan's Pat- 
ent, near Albany, beginning on Saturday and clos- 
ing in seven days, and then Asbury crossed into Ver- 
mont. He entered the state in Rutland county and 
struck the Green Mountains, and, though it was the 
14th of May, snow was in the mountains still, and the 
roads across the mountains were fearful. "We were 
obliged/' he says, "to lead the horses as they dragged 
the J carriage up the heights, over rocks, logs, and 
caving in of the earth; when w T e arrived at the Nar- 
rows we found that the bank had given way and 
slidden down. I proposed to work the carriage 
along the road by hand while Daniel Hitt led the 
horses. He preferred my leading them, so on we 
went; but I was weak and not attentive enough, 
perhaps, and the mare ran me on a rock. Up went 
the wheel hanging balanced over a precipice forty 
feet, rocks, trees, and the river beneath us. I felt 
lame by the mare' ? s treading on my foot; we un- 
hitched the beast, and righted the carriage after un- 
loading the baggage, and so we got over the danger 
and the difficulty; but never in my life have I been in 
such apparent danger." 

It was his custom, whenever he stopped, to have 
prayer, whether in taverns or private houses, among 
saints or sinners, friends or strangers, and to speak 
to everyone about his soul. The travelers went 
across Vermont to New Hampshire, into the Dis- 
trict of Maine, through Berwick, Kennebeck, Saco, 
and Scarboro to Portland, and then back into New 
Hampshire. On June 1 he was in Boston, where the 
16 



242 Francis Asbuby. 

Conference was to assemble. The Conference held 
an agreeable session, and he started west. 

He entered New York on the 15th of June, "faint, 
sick, and lame." The old rheumatic trouble in his 
feet had so lamed him that he had to walk on crutch- 
es, but despite his lameness he now decided on a visit 
to the newly-settled country in the western part of 
New York, among the lakes. Methodism had made 
quite a conquest there, and was growing rapidly. 
The camp meeting had been introduced, and had 
come to stay for a long time, and to have great in- 
fluence on its future. The country was wild, and 
there was trouble with drunken men on the camp 
grounds, which he notes. 

He now came through the mountains of eastern 
Pennsylvania, following along the course of the Sus- 
quehanna. On his way south he passed through 
Nazareth and Bethlehem, where nearly a century be- 
fore the Moravians had made their settlement. He 
was as little pleased with the Moravians as he had 
been with the Congregationalists. He could not but 
note, however, their good arrangement, their ele- 
gant buildings, and their delightful surroundings, 
and he was of the opinion that Bethlehem and Naz- 
areth were good places for the men of the world 
who did not want their children spoiled by religion, 
"They could send them here with safety." 

Across the Lehigh road, on down through Lan- 
caster, he came to York, where for some days he re- 
mained, writing up his correspondence and prepar- 
ing for his western tour. He had ridden twenty-five 
hundred miles since he left Baltimore. 

He had rheumatism in both feet, and now his old 



Francis As bury. 243 

throat trouble returned ; but he did not pause on his 
journey to Ohio, where the first Conference ever held 
in the state was to convene at Chillicothe, on the 
14th of September. He reached the seat of the Con- 
ference while there w T as a camp meeting, and pre- 
sided. He had made this long, hard journey in his 
jersey wagon, but as he now wished to visit the fron- 
tier settlements on the Miami, he sold his wagon and 
resolved to make the visitation on horseback. He 
was in poor health for such an attempt, but he never 
allowed anything to thwart him in what he thought 
was his duty; so he pushed forward, visited his old 
friends in Ohio, and crossed the river into Kentucky. 
There was little of note in the weary journey which 
he made through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. 

He was very happy in his experience, and preached 
as often as he could, pressing upon the people ev- 
erywhere the necessity for, and the possibility of, 
perfect love. He says of Georgia: "Oh, what a ne- 
cessity to urge the doctrine of sanctification ! a doc- 
trine almost forgotten here." He entered South 
Carolina and visited Rembert Hall, and on January 
1 opened the South Carolina Conference in Charles- 
ton. He had made the circuit of the continent again. 

This is a somewhat brief and uninteresting story 
of a tour which cost him great labor, and which he 
made in great pain, and it is substantially the story 
so often told in his life. There w T as generally some- 
thing new in his travels, for nearly every year he vis- 
ited some new field; but the necessity for reaching 
certain places at certain times led him often over the 
same routes of travel, and at that time the pathways 
across the mountains were so few that each year 



244 Francis As bury. 

he traveled the same road, and his journal, upon 
which one must depend largely for authentic ac- 
counts, is rather a dry detail of similar accounts very 
hastily made, and often very unsatisfactory. He 
gives nothing but a very short statement of the 
places he reached and how he reached them, and 
says little at any time of those w r ho were with him, 
and of the incidents of travel. We could, with the 
assistance of other books, fill in the vacant places by 
historic details; but a life of Asbury thus written 
would be a history of early Methodism, and not a 
simple biography of the primitive bishop. 

The work which he had so largely laid out was 
wonderfully successful. He was a man of remarka- 
ble common sense. He knew what ought to be done, 
and generally who was the best man to do it. He 
never hesitated to do any work himself, and allowed 
no hardships to discourage him, and no danger to 
daunt him. He had explored the whole territory, 
he knew the conditions, and his plans were always 
wisely conceived. The corps of assistant bishops 
whom he had chosen were men admirably selected; 
and when he was unable to direct the campaign per- 
sonally, he had a lieutenant on whom he could fully 
rely. It has been charged against him that he was 
not concerned enough about schools, colleges, an ed- 
ucated ministry, and a comfortable maintenance of 
these in the work. This may have been to some ex- 
tent true, but the immense issues at stake, the de- 
mand for the most earnest evangelistic work, in his 
mind, outranked everything else. The camp meet- 
ing had come. He saw the opportunity. The field 
preaching of John Wesley and George Whitefield, 



Francis Asburf. 245 

which made Methodism in England and Ireland, was 
now fairly begun in America, and by a strange prov- 
idence begun in the ranks of another denomination. 
The experiment born of necessity had resulted in 
an institution. There was a class of camp-meeting 
preachers who were admirably fitted to conduct 
these meetings, and they were used in every section. 
The excitements and the extravagances which were 
in these meetings were not offensive to him. The 
deadness, the formality, the lifeless prayer meeting 
were far more obnoxious to him than the noise and 
confusion of the battlefield. As he went on his way, 
he received tidings by every mail of the glorious vic- 
tories that were being won in these fields. 

He was a bright, happy old man — older, in fact, 
than his years. He saw the fruits of his untiring 
toil on every side, and while he realized the slender 
thread on which the superintendency hung, and the 
serious nature of the situation, he did not allow it to 
distress him. He had done all he could to have mat- 
ters bettered, and had failed; and now he patiently 
went on, not knowing whence relief would come. 

One thing was plain, the American preachers were 
not willing to be ruled by Dr. Coke as they had been 
by Asbury, and were not willing to have any man in 
Asbury's place whom they had not chosen and upon 
whom they could not rely. Who that one was, per- 
haps none knew. The General Conference was to 
convene in May, 1808, and there were certain changes 
that would be made then ; and at last, after twenty 
four years of trying labor, there was a prospect of 
some relief to the weary old bishop. That relief 
came when McKendree was chosen. 



CHAPTEE XXXV. 

1808. 

South Carolina Conference — George. Dougherty — Northward 
Journey Through New Virginia — Baltimore — General Con- 
ference — Death of Hairy Gough — Conference Legislation — 
Election of McKendree — Tour of the Bishops — Meets William 
Capers — Capers' s Recollections. 

THE beginning of 1808 found the South Carolina 
Conference in session in Camden, only twenty 
miles away from Rembert Hall. In the twenty years 
during which this Conference had been in existence 
it had grown wonderfully, and had already produced 
some of those remarkable men of whom it has had so 
many. One of the most wonderful men it ever had 
produced had now passed away, and Asbury paid a 
tribute to him in his sermon. This was George 
Dougherty, an Irishman by descent. He had 
worked with great success in South Carolina and 
Georgia. He was a man of unusual cultivation for 
those days, a fine Greek and Hebrew scholar, who 
had studied the advanced books on mental and moral 
science, and was a fearless and eloquent preacher. 
To him the Church owes the important law limiting 
the pastoral term. Up to the time that he suggested 
the law to limit it to two years, the bishops had been 
at their own will as to how long a preacher should 
remain in a charge. He had been the means of es- 
tablishing a rule in the South Carolina Conference 
by which if a preacher left his circuit in times of 
(246) 



Francis As bum y. 247 

pestilence he should travel no more amongst us. 
His courage in rebuking sin in Charleston had so 
angered the mob that they had dragged him to the 
town pump, and would have murdered him but for 
the intrepidity of a good woman, who stuffed her 
apron in the mouth of the pump. He had died a 
comparatively young man, and now Asbury preached 
his funeral sermon. 

This South Conference, as Asbury called it, had a 
supply of preachers brought up within it. He was 
no longer compelled to go to Virginia for his preach- 
ers, but promising boys, as he called them, were com- 
ing forward to take the charges, much to his grati- 
fication. James Russell, Lovick Pierce, Reddick 
Pierce, William Arnold, W. M. Kennedy, John Col- 
linsworth, Samuel Dunwody, men who were to act 
the yeomen's part in the future, were now receiving 
appointments from his hand. He still was as indif- 
ferent to any rules of order as he had been when the 
Conferences were composed of less than a dozen 
men, but his will was regarded as law by those who 
Avere under his charge. He gave all his thought to 
arranging the work and advancing it. He kept ev- 
ery part of it under his eye, and was on the watch 
continually for some devoted man to go to a new 
field. Everything in these frontier Conferences was 
formative, but he saw to it that no large section of 
the country was left unsupplied. The Conferences 
were not then business meetings, and every day at 
noon at this Conference there was preaching. As 
soon as the Conference was over he returned to Rem- 
bert's, and after a week's rest he began his journey 
northward. 



24:8 Francis As bur y. 

Through the forest, over bad roads, on a lame 
horse, cold, hungry, he journeyed. This, he says, 
was one side; but then he had prayer, patience, peace, 
and love, and he says he had the odds greatly in his 
favor. He was sixty-three years old, and all the 
burden of superintendency rested on his shoulders, 
but he preached as regularly as the humblest circuit 
preacher in the connection ; and riding his lame mare 
and preaching every day, he says his soul was very 
happy in the Lord. He passed through the western 
part of North Carolina, skirting the foothills, and 
thence into Henry county — New Virginia, as it was 
called. This was a comparatively new country, and 
quite a rugged one. The frequent changes of weath- 
er and the wretched road made traveling disagree- 
able, but it was much worse in the cabins, crowded 
with men, women, and children; no place to retire 
for reading, writing, or meditation, and the woods 
too cold for solitude. "We are weather-bound. I 
employ my time in writing, reading, praying, and 
planning." He was moving toward Lynchburg, 
which he reached in good time, and on Sunday 
preached to about six hundred hearers, when he was 
paid for all his toil. The Conference session began 
on Tuesday. The Virginia Conference was a very 
large, strong Conference, extending from New Berne, 
North Carolina, to the Peaks of Otter. It had a 
strong corps of preachers, and they were led by Jesse 
Lee. They had more than once thwarted Asbury in 
his aims, and had not only defeated his plan for a 
council, but his plan for a called General Conference 
which should be a delegated body; but now the Con- 
ference consented to do what he wished — to accept 



Francis As bury, 249 

the New York proposition for a delegated General 
Conference. 

Leaving Lynchburg, and traveling along through 
the Virginia midland counties, he made his way to 
Loudoun, where at the widow Roszel's he made a 
short stay. He preached at Leesburg, and arrived 
in Alexandria on the Sunday before the Conference 
began. The Conference convened in session for a 
week, and after traveling without fire, food, or wa- 
ter, on Wednesday afternoon he reached the city. 
He was not able to tarry long anywhere. He was 
anxious to complete his round, so that the Confer- 
ences should act before the General Conference in 
May, and he hurried northward, where he held the 
Philadelphia, then the New York, and then the New 
England Conference; and after having made his 
round, he reached Perry Hall again on May 2. 

It was a sad coming. His dearest friend, after 
Judge White and James Rembert, Harry Gough, was 
dying. We have often had occasion to refer to him. 
He was perhaps the wealthiest Methodist in Amer- 
ica. He belonged to the English nobility, and had 
inherited a large estate from England, married into 
the Ridgley family, and had begun life a rollicking 
gentleman of those wild days. His wife, as we have 
seen, had been converted through Asbury's influ- 
ence; he had been converted also, and was for a time 
very zealous. Then there was a time of backsliding 
and an alienation from Asbury, but his spiritual fa- 
ther had been the means of his recovery again, and 
for many years his country seat, Perry Hall, had been 
Asbury's home. It was an elegant old colonial man- 
sion with a chapel in which his many slaves assem- 



250 Francis Asbury. 

bled for family worship, and where the circuit 
preachers had- service. Gough had been very dear 
to Asbury and a true friend to the Church, and the 
General Conference paid him no higher hdnors than 
he deserved when many of the members walked in 
procession to his grave. Asbury had long hoped for 
a General Conference such as would give the west 
and far south a fair place in the councils of the 
Church, and the delegated Conference, he hoped, 
would do that. In the histories of Methodism there 
is a full account of this Conference. With it Asbury 
individually had little to do. The idea which As- 
bury had of discipline led him to interfere whenever 
he thought there was any danger of weakening au- 
thority. His favorite expression was that men who 
did not know how to obey would not know how to 
rule, but during this Conference he seems to have 
taken even a less part than in those which went be- 
fore. This was the last general convention of Meth- 
odist preachers; the last General Conference of un- 
restricted powers. From this time forth the dele- 
gated Conference had to act in a limited sphere, and 
the bishops were less under its control. The Con- 
ference elected William McKendree an associate 
bishop. It is somewhat amusing that Bishop As- 
bury should refer to this election as he does in his 
journal. "Dear brother McKendree/' he says, "was 
elected assistant bkhop. " As McKendree was not 
elected assistant but associate bishop, with coordi- 
nate powers, the manner in which the old man re- 
garded it was characteristic. He had been from 
1784 to 1808, for twenty-four years, unrestrained 
and with undivided powers, and he had little idea of 



Francis Asbury. 251 

being now superseded or hampered. McKendree 
was in the prime of his mature manhood, strong- 
minded, strong-bodied, strong-willed; a man of won- 
derful self-poise, of the most heroic mold, and withal 
of the deepest piety. He had been in fact if not in 
law a bishop for eight years, presiding over a dio- 
cese of immense area, and one which demanded the 
highest qualities in its superintendent, and he had 
met all its demands. If Asbury could have chosen 
from the whole body the man he would have pre- 
ferred as his associate, it is likely that McKendree 
would have been that man. And now for the first 
time in the fourth of a century Asbury felt that he 
could take a little rest ; but he did not do so. There 
was a respite from imperious calls, but he spent this 
month going on visiting and preaching among old 
friends and old scenes. 

When Asbury first came to Maryland in 1773, he 
was a guest at Dr. Warfield's, where the elaborate 
headdresses of the ladies distressed the strict young 
bachelor. The doctor was living still, and he came 
quite a distance to meet his old acquaintance. The 
good bishop speaks as if the dear old doctor was still 
out of the fold, for he says: "I should not regret 
coming so many miles if I could be the means of 
converting this dear man to God." He saw his old 
friends the Willises, went to the parts of western 
Maryland that he had visited years before, and with 
his associate, Henry Boehm, went into southwestern 
Pennsylvania. Some of his old friends rode sixty 
miles to see him. Again the Western Conference 
was to meet in Tennessee in October, and he had 
planned a long itinerary to cover the land till the 



252 F BANC is Asbuby. 

time came. He was in Wheeling August 1, but the 
hot days and long hills almost made him cry out. 
He reached Ohio, and went to a camp ground, and 
then to the home of General Worthington, who had 
married the daughter of his old friend Governor Tif- 
fin. Mary Tiffin, the governor's w T ife, had been very 
dear to the bishop, and speaking of her loss, he says: 
"The world little knows how dear to me are my many 
friends, and how T deeply I feel this loss." 

He was now riding through Ohio. It was August. 
He was feeble and worn, the heat was great, and the 
flies wretchedly annoying, but his heart was glad- 
dened by the promise of great results from the camp 
meetings. 

There was only one district in Ohio, and the coun- 
try was only now being settled. The discomforts 
of the journey would have been great to a well man, 
but to him they must have been distressing. At 
brother GatchelFs he saw an unfeeling man about 
to take away a poor widow's horse, and it so trou- 
bled him that brother Gatchell, to relieve him, paid 
the debt and gave the animal to the widow for her 
lifetime. 

During this trip he went into Indiana, w 7 here there 
were already twenty thousand people, and crossing 
the Ohio was again in Kentucky, and then made his 
way through Kentucky — passing from its extreme 
northern county through the entire state into Ten- 
nessee. On his way he met Benedict Swope, his old 
German friend of thirty years before. McKendree 
and Thompson came miles to meet him, and together 
they made the journey to the camp meeting at which 
the Western Conference was held. It was the first 



Franc is A such v. 253 

Conference McKendree had attended since he was 

made bishop. Asbury, following his old habit, says: 
"I began Conference, and preached twice on Sab- 
bath day and again on Tuesday/' As soon as tin's 
Conference, which was Largely cared for by his old 
friend Green Hill, had concluded its session he start- 
ed for the South Carolina Conference, which was to 
meet in the heart of middle Georgia', December 2<>. 
The Conference which ended its session was held in 
Williamson county, Tennessee, a little south of Nash 
ville. There was no direct route to Georgia, and 
the two bishops, with their companions, started into 
the wilderness. They had to journey over the moun- 
tains almost all the w r ay. They crossed the Cumber- 
land range and then the Alleghanies. Asbury was 
on a stumbling horse that would not only stumble 
but run a way. They had rain and high rivers, he had 
several severe ailments, the houses were crowded, 
the roads were rough, and the men were bad, but 
despite it all, he says, he kept on his way. They 
crossed the mountains inlo North Carolina, and then 
along the foothills in South Carolina, and then to 
Camden, where he lodged with the good old Sammy 
Matthews. 

They had a camp meeting at Rembert's, late as the 
season was. The weather was cold, and Die super- 
intendents had a hut with a chimney to it. At this 
camp meeting Asbury met his old friend Major Wil- 
liam Capers and his gifted son, whose after history 
is so well known. Major Capers was converted yea r> 
before under the ministry of Henry Willis, and under 
the influence of William TTammett had been alien- 
ated from Asburv, and gradually backslid. He had 



254 Francis Asbury. 

now been reclaimed, and his young son William, a law 
student, had been converted. They were at camp 
meeting at Bembert's, and met for the first time in 
eighteen years. Asbury had not seen William since 
he was an infant. He took him tenderly in his arms, 
as he did his aged father. A year after this, when 
the young lawyer had become a circuit preacher, as 
Asbury and Boehm passed through the young man's 
circuit, the incident occurred which, told in the in- 
imitable way of Bishop Capers, casts such a mel- 
low light on the- lovely character of the old bishop. 
Bishop Capers says: 

I met him when a heavy snow had just fallen, and the 
northwest wind blowing hard made it extremely cold. The 
snow had not been expected, and our host was out of wood, 
so that what we had to use had been picked up from under 
the snow and was damp and incombustible. Our bedroom 
was a loft with a fireplace to it and a plenty of wood, but how 
to make the wood burn was the question. I had been at 
work blowing and blowing long before bedtime till to my 
mortification the aged bishop came up, and there was still 
no fire to warm him. "0, Billy Sugar," said he as he ap- 
proached the fireplace, "never mind, give it up, we will get 
warm in bed;" and then stepping to his bed as if to ascertain 
the certainty of it, and lifting the bedclothes, he continued: 
"Yes, give it up, Sugar; blankets a plenty." So I gave it up, 
thinking that the play of my pretty strong lungs might dis- 
turb his devotions, for he was instantly on his knees. 

But then how might I be sure of waking early enough to 
kindle a fire at four o'clock? My usual hour had been six, 
and to meet the difficulty I concluded to wrap myself in my 
overcoat and lie on the bed without using the bedclothes. 
In this predicament I was not likely to oversleep myself on 
so cold a night. But there might be danger of my not know- 
ing what hour it was when I happened to wake. Nap after 
nap was dreamed away, as I lay shivering in the cold, till I 



Francis As bury. 255 

thought it must be four o'clock; and then, creeping to the fire 
and applying the breath of my live bellows as I held the 
watch to the reluctant coals, to see the hour, I had just made 
it out when the soft accents saluted me: "Go to bed, Sugar. 
It is hardly three o'clock yet." 

Another night he says: 

It was past four o'clock, and the bishop was up, but Billy 
Sugar lay fast asleep. So he whispered to brother Boehm 
not to disturb him, and the fire was made. They were 
dressed, had had their devotions, and were at their books 
before I was awake. This seemed shockingly out of order; 
and my confusion was complete, as, waking and springing 
out of bed, I saw them sitting before a blazing fire. I could 
scarcely say good-morning, and the bishop, as if he might 
have been offended at my neglect, affected not to hear it. 
Boehm, who knew him better, smiled pleasantly, and I whis- 
pered in his ear: "Why didn't you wake me?" The bishop 
seemed to hear this, and closing his book, and turning to me 
with a look of downright mischief, had an anecdote for me. 
"I was traveling," said he, "quite lately, and came to a cir- 
cuit where we had one of our good boys. Oh, he was so 
good, and the weather was as cold as it was this night at 
brother Hancock's, and, as I was Bishop Asbury, he got up 
in the cold at three o'clock to make a fire for me. And what 
do you think? He slept last night till six." And he tickled 
at it as if he might have been a boy himself. And this was 
Bishop Asbury, whom I have heard called austere; a man, 
confessedly, who never shed tears, and who seldom laughed, 
but whose sympathies were nevertheless as soft as a sancti- 
fied spirit might possess. 

After the camp meeting was over the travelers 
went on to Charleston, and from thence to the South 
Carolina Conference, which met at a camp ground in 
Green county, in Georgia. This was the first and 
only Annual Conference in this section held in con- 
nection with a camp meeting or near a country 
church. At this Conference William Capers was ad- 



256 Francis As bub r. 

mitted into the traveling connection. Asbury intro- 
duced McKendree, the new bishop, to the Confer- 
ence, and one by one they came forward and took 
him by the hand. 

At the General Conference of 1800 a resolution 
was passed allowing an elder to travel constantly 
with Bishop Asbury. He had had Hull, Lee, and 
Whatcoat to accompany him as companions before 
the resolution was adopted, and after that Crawford, 
Snethen, and Daniel Hitt; and now he selected Hen- 
ry Boehm, the son of his old friend Martin Boehm, 
the German pietist. Henry Boehm was now a 
steady young German, thirty-three years old, who 
had been a Methodist preacher for eight years. He 
was Asbury's traveling companion for six years, and 
assisted him greatly in his arduous work. Boehm 
could preach in German and English, and as there 
were scattered through the land a large number of 
native Germans who did not speak English, Boehnrs 
services were of great value. Boehm lived to be over 
a hundred years old, and during his hundredth year 
a volume of his Reminiscences was issued. His 
journal runs parallel to that of Asbury, and he says 
little in it which Asbury does not say in his record. 
During the year he traveled with the bishop from 
the first of May. He was to meet him at Perry Hall 
on a certain day, but he stopped at a camp meeting 
and was detained a day beyond his time. When he 
reached Perry Hall, Asbury was gone. By hard rid- 
ing he caught up with him, and accompanied him on 
this long tour which left them at the end of the year 
in the heart of middle Georgia. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

1809. 

McKendree's New Departure — Northward Tour — Conference at 
Harrisonburg — Journey to New England — Western New 
York — Western Conference in Cincinnati — Journey to 
Charleston. 

SINCE Asbury had taken the control of the Meth- 
odist societies in Delaware in 1780 until now he 
had been the virtual dictator in the connection, at 
least so far as directing the work was concerned. 
Although Coke was legally his colleague, practically 
he had no more to do with the work than if his name 
had not been on the minutes. Whatcoat had been a 
legal bishop, but he had yielded the entire control 
to Asbury, and for all these years no will save As- 
bury's own had been considered in making appoint- 
ments. In making laws and regulations, and in 
executing discipline, the Conferences had never been 
at all interfered with by him, but in arranging the 
work and appointing the men to do it he had con- 
sulted no one. He appointed presiding elders, and 
when he was out of the way they acted as vicar-gen- 
erals, and ruled things as arbitrarily as he did, but 
when he was on the ground, they were not his cab- 
inet to counsel, but his lieutenants to execute. He 
felt the w r eight upon him, and longed for relief. He 
had once determined to resign, but had been per- 
suaded not to do so. The time had now come when 
there was some possibility of securing relief. Mc- 
Kendree, who had been elected in Mav, 1808, had 
17 " (257) 



258 Francis Asbuby. 

been Asbury's trusted helper in the superintend- 
ency for over ten years. He had been presiding 
over districts in the east which covered half a state, 
and in the west over a district which swept from the 
Alleghany Mountains to the Mississippi River. He 
had been in sole charge of this work for the years 
that Asbury was an invalid, and in all the excite- 
ment and confusion resulting from the great awak- 
ening in the west out of which came such deplorable 
results to other Churches, McKendree, by his strong 
nerve and wonderful common sense, protected the 
Methodist charges from greater harm. He had been 
unknown in the east, but when he preached his first 
sermon in Baltimore he was at once chosen as a bish- 
op. He had not accepted the office expecting anoth- 
er to do the work, and Asbury soon found he had a 
colleague, and not an assistant. When McKendree 
took the presidency of the Conference he made some 
striking changes in the manner of conducting bus- 
iness. It had been conducted by Asbury in an in- 
formal and somewhat disorderly way. After Mc- 
Kendree had read his address in the General Con- 
ference of 1812, the old man rose and said, turning 
to McKendree: "I have something to say to you be- 
fore all the brethren. You have done to-day what T 
never did. I want to know why." McKendree calm- 
ly said: "You are our father, and do not need these 
rules. I am a son, and do." "So, so!" said the old 
bishop with a smile, as he sat down. 

It would have been greatly to the relief of As- 
bury's brethren, as well as to his own, if he had con- 
sented to take a season of rest, and if he had left 
to his younger and stronger companions the harder 



Francis Asbuby. 259 

part of the work at least, but this he could not do. 
He had been so unceasingly on the wing for nearly 
fifty years that rest was not relief, and although 
it was not really necessary for him to travel, he 
thought it was, and did not abate his labors at all. 
The beginning of the new year of 1809 found him 
with McKendree, in a thirty-dollar chaise, riding 
through middle Georgia on his way to Tarborough, 
North Carolina, where the Virginia Conference was 
to meet. He and his companion reached it in good 
time and presided. This Conference included a 
large part of North Carolina and all of Virginia 
east of the Blue Ridge. There was one thing about 
it which pleased Asbury greatly: there were but 
three married men in it. He thought the opposition 
of these high-toned southerners to the marriage of 
their daughters to Methodist preachers was, after 
all, a blessing, in that it kept the preachers single. 
Asbury was not opposed to the marriage of laymen, 
nor was he in favor of a coerced celibacy among the 
preachers, but he found it so much easier to use 
single men in the hard work demanded, and so much 
easier to support them, that he looked upon the mar- 
riage of the preacher as a calamity, expecting that 
soon after marriage there would come location. 

I have already intimated that Asbury's view with 
reference to the immediate abolition of slavery had 
undergone a modification. He had ceased to write 
in favor of emancipation in his journal, or to urge it 
in the Conferences and from the pulpit. His hatred 
of slavery as a system had not changed, his love for 
the negro race was not at all diminished, but he was 
satisfied that immediate emancipation was neither 



260 Francis Asbury. 

practicable nor judicious. He says in his journal, 
February, 1809: "Would not the amelioration of the 
condition and treatment of slaves have produced 
more practical good than any attempt at emancipa- 
tion? The state of society unhappily does not admit 
this; besides, the blacks are thus deprived of the 
means of instruction." 

The Conference ended, the bishops rode by Suffolk 
and Portsmouth, and on through central Virginia 
across the mountains into the valley, where, at Har- 
risonburg, the Baltimore Conference was to have its 
session. A large body of German pietists, Mennon- 
ites, Dunkards, and Lutherans had settled in this 
rich Valley of Virginia, as had quite a number of 
families from eastern Virginia. Among the eastern 
Virginians was a young physician named Harrison. 
He was the father of the distinguished Gessner Har- 
rison, so famous as the Professor of Greek at the 
University of Virginia, and the grandfather of the 
distinguished authoress, Mrs. Mary Stuart Smith, 
wife of Professor F. H. Smith, of the University of 
Virginia. As soon as the Conference had conclud- 
ed its session the bishop went northward, and pass- 
ing through the Valley of Virginia entered Maryland 
by Frederick City, and on to Baltimore. He spent 
only a few days in the city of his early love. Al- 
though it was March, a camp meeting was held near 
Perry Hall, and the heart of the bishop was sad as he 
passed near the home of his friend Henry Gough. 
The Conference that met in Philadelphia, as well as 
that which met in New York, gave him trouble; and 
he said that while he was not conscious of wrong tem- 
pers, he was not willing to hold a Conference again 



Francis As bury. 261 

in Philadelphia, and that he should hold his peace 
about some things which occurred in New York. 

He had received much kindness from the Quakers 
in his early days in Maryland, New Jersey, and Del- 
aware, but he felt it his duty now to rebuke them, 
much to their annoyance, and to say that he feared 
the reproach of Christ had been wiped away from 
them. The reader has of course seen that the good 
old bishop had a high standard of religious excel- 
lence, and perhaps in his opinion none but Metho- 
dists reached that, and very few of them. He w T ent 
on his way to New England. He had not been very 
well pleased with matters on his first visit, and on 
each succeeding one he had seen things in no better 
light, and it was not very likely that as he grew T old- 
er and more exacting he would find less to censure. 
As they came into Newport he was horrified when 
he saw a grand house, with a high steeple and pews, 
built by a lottery. But when he came to Bristol 
"the Methodists here had a house with pews and a 
preacher who had not half enough to do. Poor work! 
I have as much as I can bear," he said, "in body and 
mind. I see what has been doing for nine years past 
to make Presbyterian Methodists." If the piety of 
the New Englanders had not improved, their hospi- 
tality had, for the bishop called at but one tavern. 

When he reached Lynn, and had an interview 
with the official brethren, they gave him a doleful 
account of the condition of things: "the preachers 
did not preach evangelically, did not visit the fam- 
ilies, and neglected the classes." The old bishop 
listened respectfully enough, but said: "One story 
was good till another was told." The New England 



262 Francis Asbuey. 

Conference was to meet in Maine on the 15th of 
June, and at New Gloucester it was held, and then 
the travelers returned through New Hampshire into 
Vermont, and across into upper New York, and then 
into western New York, where they preached in 
barns and slept on the floor, and now and then 
preached in the courthouses. The Congregational- 
ists, whom Asbury always calls Presbyterians, were 
laboring to preempt the country by building churches 
and establishing congregations. Asbury says some- 
what complacently: "They will flourish awhile, but 
a despised people will possess the land. Oh, the 
terrors of a camp meeting to these men of pay and 
show!" The country was quite new, and accommo- 
dations were very poor. He says: "In the evening 
we mounted our horses in the rain and came six 
miles, dripping wet, to Asa Cummings's cabin, 
twelve feet square. On Tuesday morning we were 
well soaked before we reached David Eddy's. We 
had an awful time on Thursday in the woods, 
amongst rocks and trees, and behold the backwater 
had covered the causeway. One finds it hard to re- 
alize that less than a hundred years ago, in so old 
a state as New York, there was such a new and un- 
settled state of things. In upper Pennsylvania mat- 
ters were worse. "Such roads, such rains, and such 
lodgings!" he says. "Why should I wish to stay in 
this land? I have no possessions or babes to bind 
me to the soil. What are called the comforts of life 
I rarely enjoy. The wish to live an hour such a life 
would be strange to so suffering, so toil-worn a 
wretch. But God is with me, and souls are my re- 
ward. I may yet rejoice; yea, I will rejoice." 



Francis As bury. 263 

The sensitive eld man generally, indeed almost 
universally, received great kindness, but sometimes 
it was not his good portion. "I called at a certain 
house/' he says. "It would not do. I was com- 
pelled to turn out again to the pelting of the wind 
and rain. Though old I have eyes. The hand of 
God will come upon them. As for the young lady, 
shame and contempt will fall on her. Mark the 
event." Asbury nearly always preached on Sunday, 
and rarely traveled on that day; but sometimes he 
did, and on this journey he says: "Sunday 23. — We 
must needs ride to-day ; our route lay through Wal- 
nut Bottom, but we missed our way and the preach- 
ing of George Lane. A twenty - four mile ride 
brought us to breakfast at Otis's. Brother Boehm 
upset the sulky and broke the shaft. Night closed 
upon us at Osterout's tavern." They made their 
way through the mountains, and although the roads 
were so rough, he says he was simple enough to put 
plasters on his knees, and they drew huge blisters, 
so he neither stood to preach nor kneeled to pray. 
Two days afterwards he preached in the courthouse, 
and while he was preaching the presiding elder put 
his feet on the banister of his pulpit; "it was like 
thorns in his flesh till they were taken down." He 
had supplied himself with tracts in German and 
English, which he gave away. Cold and chilly as he 
was, he went to camp meeting and preached; and 
the two bishops made their way to Pittsburg, where 
the "Rev. Mr. Steel offered, unsolicited, in the name 
of the Presbyterian eldership, their elegant house 
for my Sunday exercises." 

The bishops were moving toward Ohio to meet 



264 Francis Asbury. 

the Western Conference, which was to meet in Cin- 
cinnati on the 30th of September; and passing 
through Wheeling, in which Colonel Zane had given 
ground for a chapel, he preached in the courthouse, 
and went into Ohio. He said he was weak and weary, 
but had great consolation in God and a witness of 
holiness in his soul. Why he said it then I cannot 
conjecture, but he adds to this: "We have our diffi- 
culties with married preachers, their wives and chil- 
dren, but while God is with us these difficulties must 
be borne." The camp meeting was now spreading 
all over the west. It was a very primitive affair 
A grove was chosen near a stream, logs were cut 
down for seats, a simple stand was made for the 
preacher, and the people literally camped out for 
days. These meetings Asbury so heartily indorsed 
that he wished there might be twenty in a week in 
the various parts of the work. His old friend Gov- 
ernor Tiffin was now plain Dr. Tiffin, and he called to 
see him. While the talk of others was of politics, 
and of land, he had little taste for these topics. 
"O Lord, give me souls, " he says, "and keep me 
holy." McKendree had gone in one direction, and 
he was going in another. Ohio was being peopled 
with marvelous rapidity, and there had been but lit- 
tle time for comforts to be provided. Asbury says : 
"I slept about five hours last night. I had excessive 
labor, a crowd of company and hogs, dogs, and other 
annoyances to weary me." At last the bishops met 
at Cincinnati, which Asbury calls "fair Cincinnati," 
where they had the Western Conference, and after 
its close he went into Kentucky. 

The Conference was to meet in South Carolina in 



Francis As bury. 265 

two months' time, but Asbury and McKendree were 
in Kentucky, and there was a ride of several hun- 
dred miles to Charleston where the Conference was 
to meet. Eight times, he says, within nine years 
had he crossed these Alps, and was under the neces- 
sity of putting up at the wretched inns where there 
were drinking and carousing. He made the journey 
safely, and at last on the 10th of December was 
again in Charleston. Here for two weeks he re- 
mained and recruitt- d, and the first day of 1810 found 
the untiring man again on the highway. 

Henry Boehm, who was Asbury's traveling com- 
panion, kept a journal, from which, fifty years after 
Asbury's death, he published extracts, which add 
something to the information given by the bishop 
himself. The journey through the mountains of 
eastern Pennsylvania, when Boehm was thrown 
from the sulky and badly hurt, though not disabled, 
was specially memorable. The roads were awful, 
and the rain poured in torrents. The mountain 
streams were dangerously high, and they were in a 
wilderness. On the banks of the Elk, where it was 
too high to cross, they met an eccentric Englishman 
who was living alone in the wilds, four miles from 
any other person, and in a homely cabin. He re- 
ceived the strangers and kept them with him for 
several days. Boehm said as he held the purse and 
knew that they had but two dollars between them, 
th3 hospitality of the hermit was for more than 
one reason grateful to them. The sturdy young 
German was required to put out his full strength to 
keep up with the untiring old man, who never knew 
the meaning of the word rest. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

1810. 

Asbury and McKendree on Their Second Tour — The Virginia 
Conference — Mary Witney's Funeral — New York Conference 
— New England— Jesse Lee's History — Lee and Asbury — 
Genesee Conference — Western Conference— Senator Taylor. 

THE Virginia Conference was to meet early in 
February in Petersburg, and to meet it the 
bishops were compelled to push forward very rapid- 
ly. The winter was very severe, and they had rain 
and snow in abundance. Pressing on through up- 
per South Carolina, they passed through Fayette- 
ville in North Carolina, on to Wilmington, where 
Asbury was gratified to find things greatly bettered, 
and on through New Berne and Edenton into east- 
ern Virginia. Rising at four, they were often on 
the road at five, and rode fifty miles a day. Poor 
Henry Boehm, the youngest of the company, with 
an awful cough and fevers, suffered more than his 
older associates. The ride was made, however, in 
time to meet the Conference on the 9th of February, 
and on the 25th he was in Baltimore. After the 
Conference he made his usual visit to the eastern 
shore. It was McKendree's first visit, but here As- 
bury had labored for over thirty years, and those 
who in infancy were dandled on his knee received 
him into their homes. The Philadelphia Confer- 
, ence met at Easton, in Maryland, and after its ad- 
journment he went northward. At Chester he 
(266) 



Fbancis Asbury. 2G7 

preached the funeral of a good woman whom he 
often mentions. Mary Withey, "who kept the best 
inn on the continent, and always received the preach- 
ers/' entertained the young English missionary in 
1772. Under his prayer in family worship she was 
convicted, and afterwards happily converted. She 
formed a society in Chester, and for all these years 
her ho.use had been his home. Asbury said "she 
had Martha's anxieties and Mary's humility." Thus 
his old friends were leaving him: Eliza Dalham, 
Sarah Gough, Mary Tiffin, Mary Rembert — all sis- 
ters to the tender-hearted, homeless exile, who de- 
serve to be mentioned in the story of Methodism. 
He was now passing over ground he had often trav- 
eled, and preaching in churches in which he had 
ministered for twoscore years. 

The New York Conference met at Pittsfield, Mas- 
sachusetts, and the New England Conference at 
Winchester, New Hampshire. After the Conference 
closed he came into Massachusetts again. He says: 
"Our preachers get wives and a home and run to 
their dears almost every night. How can they by 
personal observation know the state of the families 
it is a part of their duty to watch over for good?" 
In Rhode Island he says: "Oh, the death — the for- 
mality in religion! Surely the zealous, noisy Meth- 
odists cannot but do good here." At Bristol where 
they had the church with pews and a steeple, he 
spoke with power to their consciences, "but their 
favorite preacher was removed, and saints and sin- 
ners were displeased." "We are on our lees here — 
no riding of circuits, local preaching and stations 
filled in the towns." 



268 Francis as bury. 

Jesse Lee had written his History ; the General Con- 
ference refused to publish it, and Lee had published 
it on his own account. Asbury says of it: "I have 
seen Jesse Lee's History for the first time; it is bet- 
ter than I expected. He has not always presented 
me under the most favorable aspects. We are all 
liable to mistakes, and I am unmoved by his. I cor- 
rect him in one fact : my compelled seclusion at the 
beginning of the war was in nowise a season of in- 
activity. On the contrary, except about two months 
of retirement, it was the most active, most useful, 
and most afflictive part of my life. If I spent a few 
dumb Sabbaths, if I did not, for a short time, steal 
after dark, or through the gloom of the woods, as 
was my wont, from house to house, to enforce the 
truth, I (an only child) had left father and mother 
to proclaim, I shall not be blamed, I hope, when it is 
known that my patron, Thomas White, was taken 
into custody by the light-horse patrol ; if such things 
happened to him, what might I expect, a fugitive 
and an Englishman?" Those who have read the 
journal of these years can see the justice of this de- 
fense. The fact was that the burly Virginian and 
the delicate, sensitive Englishman were not likely 
to understand each other. They were equally good 
men, and each filled well the place in which a good 
Providence had placed him, but they were as little 
likely to understand each other as Luther was to 
understand Calvin. They could each work and 
work well, but they could not work together. Those 
who have studied Mr, Wesley's life have seen how 
impossible it was for him to see eye to eye with any 
of his equals. No one had a gentler and less selfish 



Francis As bury. 269 

spirit than Asbury, but it was with him "Caesar or 
no one." The two men who did the most for Meth- 
odism in the east were Lee and Asbury, but the two 
were as different as Paul and Peter, and agreed no 
better. 

The bishops had, by their volition, set off a part 
of western New York and Pennsylvania into a Con- 
ference, to be called the Genesee, and its first ses- 
sion was to be held at Lyons, in western New York; 
and after the tour in New England, they made their 
way toward the village in which it' was to be held. 
After a hard and rapid ride they reached Lyons and 
held the Conference, July 20, 1S10. It included a 
part of New York, Pennsylvania, and Canada. As- 
bury spent the rest of the summer visiting camp 
meetings and preaching in the villages and country 
places of western Pennsylvania. He was not well, 
and he said: "Lord, prepare me by thy grace for the 
patient endurance of hunger, heat, labor, the clown- 
ishness of ignorant piety, the impudence of the im- 
pious, unreasonable preachers, and more unreason- 
able heretics and heresy." 

The Western Conference was to meet the 1st of 
November, and the two bishops made a visitation, 
such as they had made the year before, to the rapid- 
ly growing churches of Ohio, and into Kentucky. 
Bishop Asbury at this time was, perhaps, better ac- 
quainted with all parts of the United States than 
any one man in its boundary. He was known and 
honored everywhere. The people whom he met, as 
he trudged along over the hills and mountains of 
western Pennsylvania, knew him by name. He was 
no longer what he had once been in the pulpit. His 



270 Francis As bub y. 

sermons were disconnected, but earnest — often pa- 
thetic — talks. He was sometimes severe, and, he said, 
he feared too strong in his censures; but all knew 
the warm, tender heart which lay back of it all. He 
was sometimes petulant and childish in his inter- 
course with the preachers, but all who knew him, 
and by this time nearly all did know him, knew how 
warmly he loved those he chided. His travels were 
much over the same routes, and his journals are 
monotonous accounts of the same hardships. He 
ought not at his age to have attempted what he did 
attempt, but on he went untiring and undaunted. 
The journey through Kentucky was without adven- 
ture. He passed through Frankfort, where as yet 
the Methodists had no house of worship. He 
preached in Nicholasville and Winchester, and here 
he saw his old friend Francis Poythress, whose mind 
had given way, and who was being cared for by his 
sister, Mrs. Lyons. He says: "If thou be'st he, oh 
how fallen!" 

With much difficulty they made their way to 
Columbia, where the South Carolina Conference 
had its session. Senator Taylor, of the United 
States Congress, was a Methodist, and he lent the 
Conference his home for its session. As soon as the 
Conference adjourned Asbury started on his annual 
visit to Charleston, and in a few days he was in his 
old quarters in the Bethel parsonage. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

1811.- 

Asbury in His Old Age — Sweetness of His Character — Criticism 
on Adam Clarke — Visits Canada —Returns to the States — 
Goes to Ohio and Southward to Georgia. 

ASBURY was now sixty-six years old, and had 
been forty years in America. He was not 
really an old man, but hard labor, great exposure, 
and needless austerity had taxed a naturally frail 
constitution too heavily; and while he was not old 
in years, he was in fact. He ought to have rested, 
but he could not. He had been traveling constantly 
for forty-six years, and he could not be still. So he 
left South Carolina immediately after the Confer- 
ence closed, and went to the Virginia Conference at 
Raleigh, North Carolina, and to the Baltimore Con- 
ference at Pipe Creek. He saw the widow of his old 
friend Henry Willis, and says: "Henry Willis! ah, 
when shall I look on his like again?" He trembled 
for these Baltimore preachers, who had such ease 
and comfort, and wondered how they could retain 
the spirit of religion amid such pleasant surround- 
ings; and he was much distressed over the marriage 
of four young preachers, which would take $800 
from the funds. 

It was a pleasing thing to him now to meet the 
children of his old parishioners, and find a shelter 
in their homes. There was no place so dear to him 
as Maryland. The Howards, the Warfields, the Hig- 

'271) 



272 Francis As bury. 

ginses, the Owings, the Dallanis, the Goughs, the 
Kogerses, and others, had been his friends for forty 
years. 

1? he good old man, always gentle and tender, had 
become more so in his later years, and in his anxiety 
to do good, so far as we can see, he taxed himself 
needlessly, and inflicted upon himself such suffer- 
ings by his persistence in doing what he believed to 
be his duty that reading his journal becomes posi- 
tively painful; but his religious comfort was now 
continuous. He says*: "Sometimes I am ready to 
cry out, 'Lord, take me home to rest;' courage, my 
soul!" "At Benjamin Sherwood's I stopped a mo- 
ment and called the family to prayer," "Came to- 
night to Major Taylor's. Monday my kind enter- 
tainer and family made me a promise to be hence- 
forth for God." "I feel great consolation and per- 
fect love." "I rode sixteen miles to see brother 
Wilson in his affliction." "Oh, the clover of Balti- 
more Circuit! Ease, ease, not for me — toil, suffer- 
ing, coarse food, hard lodging, bugs, fleas, and cer- 
tain etceteras besides." 

He went over the same ground he had traversed 
in 1772, and found a few of his old friends living. 
The seed he had then sown had brought forth abun- 
dantly, and the Methodists were now numerous, and 
Methodist churches were all along his route. The 
old homes which received him then were here still, 
and he sought them out. The Dallam and Bennett 
and Garrettson homes were still here, and, while the 
old people were gone, the children welcomed the 
patriarchal bishop whom they had loved from their 
infancy. 



Francis Asbury. 273 

It was his rule to speak to all who came into his 
presence on their soul's interest, which sometimes, 
he says, he was not ready to do. "I covenanted 
with General Burleson to pray for him every day." 
"A poor afflicted widow called on me; for what do 
I live but to do good and teach others so to do by 
precept and example?" 

New Jersey had not been fruitful ground for the 
Methodists, and he says: "I am unknown in Jersey, 
and ever shall be, I presume; after forty years' labor 
we have not ten thousand in membership." "I read 
Adam Clarke, and am amused as well as instructed. 
He indirectly unchristianizes all old bachelors. Woe 
is me ! It was not good for Adam to be alone for bet- 
ter reasons than any Adam Clarke has given." 

"We came to Middleburg (Vermont); here is col- 
lege craft and priestcraft." The heat was great, 
the roads were wretched, and he was suffering much 
with his feet ; but he pressed on into Canada, where 
there were quite a number of Methodists, and made 
his first and only visit to that province. Along the 
banks of the St. Lawrence and the shores of Lake 
Ontario a considerable body of settlers, most of them 
Americans, had fixed their homes ; and to them mis- 
sionaries from the states had been sent, and now 
there were several circuits supplied with preachers 
from the Genesee Conference. Bishop Asbury part- 
ed from McKendree in Vermont, and with Bela 
Smith as his guide and Boehm as a companion, he 
struck out for the new settlements. He crossed 
Lake Champlain, and preached in a barroom at 
Plattsburg, and then began his journey to the settle- 
ments bv entering the wilderness. He came out of 
18 



274 Francis As bury. 

it at the village of the Indians where the St. Kegis 
River enters the St. Lawrence. The Indians put the 
travelers across the wide and rapid river by lashing 
their canoes together and putting the horses and 
men in them. Safely over the river, the mission- 
aries made their way from settlement to settlement, 
preaching as they went, until they reached Lake 
Ontario. Here they took a scow as a ferryboat to 
go across the lake to Sackett's Harbor. It was a 
fearful voyage, for a storm burst on the rickety old 
boat; and after being in great peril of wreck, the 
captain anchored the scow near an island, where 
Asbury, lying on a pile of hay, and covered with the 
saddle blankets, passed the night. The next day 
the weary man, tortured with rheumatism, was in 
the wilds of western New York. He was too ill to 
travel, and Boehru, w T ho tells of this journey, left 
him and went himself to fill an appointment forty 
miles away, and then by an all-night ride returned 
and accompanied him to the Genesee Conference, 
which met in Oneida. This section of western New 
York was comparatively new, and the rides were 
hard at the best, but his feet were in a wretched 
condition; and poor " Spark," his faithful beast, was 
lame. He was forced to sell him; and as the bish- 
op rode off on his new mare, poor " Spark" nickered 
his "good-by," and it went to his heart. "Jane," 
"Fox," and "Spark," the three beasts who bore him, 
do much to make one hope that Mr. Wesley's theory 
of the second life of good quadrupeds may be true. 
The eight Conferences had furnished twenty-five dol- 
lars each for traveling expenses, of which the bishop 
had expended one hundred and thirty dollars. 



Francis As bury. 275 

He says he was unspeakably happy in God, and 
when he reached father Boehnrs he wished to rest, 
but they would have him away to the camp meeting) 
and w ith inflamed feet, and a high fever, and a wast- 
ing dysentery, he went and preached. Good father 
Boehm had some old Khenish wine of his own make 
which refreshed him; and could the weary old bishop 
have rested long enough he might have sooner re- 
covered, but he could only rest a little while, and 
then he was on his way again. 

Through southern Pennsylvania he went again 
into Ohio. He crossed the center of the state, and 
was among old friends, some of whom he had known 
in Virginia and Maryland. He searched for his old 
friends, and among them found John Death, whom 
he had known in the Monongahela. He had been 
spiritually dead, the bishop said, but his old friend 
dug him up. 

The Western Conference met at Cincinnati, and at 
this Conference in 1811 James B. Finley was or- 
dained a deacon. Mr. Finley wrote in an after time 
some very interesting reminiscences of these times, 
and gives an incident of this Conference which was 
characteristic. "Bishop Asbury said to the preach- 
ers: ' Brethren, if any of you shall have anything 
peculiar in your circumstances that should be 
known to the superintendent in making your ap- 
pointment, if you will drop me a note, I will, as far 
as will be compatible with the great interests of 
the Church, endeavor to accommodate you.' I had 
a great desire to go west, because I had relatives, 
which called me in that direction, and it would be 
more pleasant to be with them; so I sat down and 



276 Francis As bury. 

addressed a polite note to the bishop, requesting him 
to send me west. My request was not granted. I 
was sent a hundred miles east. I said to him: 'If 
that's the way you answer prayers, you will get no 
more prayers from me.' 'Well/ he said, 'be a good 
son, James, and all things will work together for 
good.' " 

He then came into Kentucky, and here there is a 
break in his journal, for the next entry puts him in 
the center of Georgia at Littleberry Bostwick's, in 
Louisville. He went to Burke, Scriven, Effingham, 
and reached Savannah, where the new church was 
just begun, and back again to Camden, South Caro- 
lina, where the Conference was held, and to Charles- 
ton, where he ended the year 1811. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

1812. 

Near the Close — General Conference — Presiding Eldership — 
Benson's Life of Fletcher— Ohio — Nashville. 

THE Virginia Conference was to meet in Rich- 
mond, February 20, and Asbury made his way 
directly to it. It was the first session of a Methodist 
Conference in Richmond. The old parts of Virginia 
where Methodism had won such triumphs were now 
being largely drawn upon for emigrants to the south 
and west, but the newer parts of the state were rap- 
idly filling up. He sais little of the Conference ses- 
sion, save that the number of preachers stationed 
was smaller than usual. The Conference began on 
Thursday, the 20th. Among the preachers w T ho at- 
tended the Conference was Dr. Samuel K. Jennings, 
who was selected afterw r ards as Asbury's biogra- 
pher, and who, he says, was much followed. Leaving 
Richmond as soon as Conference adjourned, he rode 
down the James and visited again Williamsburg and 
Yorktown. He found this ancient city declining in 
numbers and in wealth because of the decrease of 
trade and the prevalence of strong drink. 

He was on his way to the Baltimore Conference, 
which was to meet at Leesburg on the. 20th of March. 
Here in this good old city there was a happy Confer- 
ence, as there was in Phildelphia. The General 
Conference of 1812, the first delegated General Con- 
ference, was to meet in New York, and on May 1st 

(277) 



278 F BANC is As BURY. 

it convened. The General Convention of 1808 had 
restricted the powers of the General Conference, 
and Asbury, who was very jealous of any limit upon 
the powers of the bishops to appoint, had hoped that 
after the decisive action of the General Conference 
of 1808 the agitation about the eldership would 
cease, but he found himself greatly deceived. His 
old colleagues, Lee an(J Snethen, were on the side of 
the progressives, who desired to make the presiding 
elders elective. These, as Asbury said, were great 
men, but they were defeated. While Asbury was 
traveling through Georgia, twenty years before, he 
had met Colonel Few, who was a^ Marylander and 
one of the first senators from Georgia. He had re- 
moved to New York, and here Asbury met him and 
breakfasted with him. The wife of brother Seney, 
whose descendant, George I. Seney, has made his 
name and memory so precious, had been a leader in 
the good work of raising a handsome contribution 
for the poor preachers of the New England Confer- 
ence, which Asbury carried with him. One of his 
striking characteristics was his attachment to old 
friends and to the homes in which he had stayed. 
For years together he never changed his stopping 
places, and what Perry Hall in Maryland, and Lott 
Ballard's in North Carolina, and Rembert's in South 
Carolina, and Grant's in Georgia were, was mother 
Sherwood's, tw 7 enty-four miles from New York. At 
Albany the New York Conference was to convene. 
It met at the same time with the Synod of the Re- 
formed Dutch Church. In Lynn, where the first 
Methodist chapel was built, he was disturbed by the 
proposition to place a steeple on the new meeting 



Francis As bury. 279 

house, and he said if it was done it must not be 
by Methodist order or by Methodist money. After 
leaving Lynn, they went without adventure to west- 
ern New York, where, in Lyons again, the Genesee 
Conference was to be held. He found his old 
friends scattered all over this new country, and 
reached Lyons in good time, where he had a pleasant 
session of the Conference, and then through the 
excessive heat of July he pressed over these wild 
hills into Pennsylvania. In those days there w r as a 
general laxity in the matter of drinking alcoholic 
liquors, and among these bibulous Germans drinking 
was all but universal. Asbury was always an un- 
compromising foe of drink of all kinds. He says: 
"The Germans are decent in their behavior in this 
neighborhood, and it would be more so were it not 
for vile whisky — this is the prime curse of the Unit- 
ed States." 

On his way southward he passed through Middle- 
town, Maryland, where lie had at last a small chapel, 
and to Hagerstown, where he preached in the new 
church. He rode on through Cumberland, and vis- 
ited the camp ground near by. He made it a rule to 
speak to all he met on the subject of their soul's in- 
terest, and his gray hairs and saintly aspect always 
secured to him a hearing. While he was on this 
trip he read, as he rested, Benson's Life of Fletcher, 
and says: "Comparing myself with Fletcher, what 
am I in piety, wisdom, labor, or usefulness? God 
be gracious unto me." The recluse of Madeley and 
the working bishop of America could not well be 
compared; but if they were to be, the American bish- 
op is not the one who would stand lowest in the 



280 Francis Asb ub r. 

popular verdict. The old man's heart was glad^ 
dened by seeing the immense crowds who flocked 
to the camp grounds which he visited on his way to 
the growing west. He passed through Ohio, and 
attended the first session of the Ohio Conference, 
which met in Chillicothe, October 1. His rest at 
night had been broken. A severe neuralgia had 
kept him awake, and yet he preached three times 
at this Conference. On the last day he says his 
strength failed. "I want sleep, sleep, sleep." On 
Wednesday, exhausted, he stole away and slept for 
three hours, and then they called him up to read the 
stations. 

The Tennessee Conference was to meet near Nash- 
ville on the 1st of November, and he must try to 
reach it; and though feverish and worn as he was, 
he began the journey. Through Ohio they came into 
Kentucky, and then through Kentucky into Middle 
Tennessee. On this tour he made his first visit to 
Louisville, Kentucky, which he says was "a growing 
town, where we had a neat brick house, thirty by 
thirty-eight;" and then directly to Nashville, where 
the kind jailer took them in charge and entertained 
them. There was now in Nashville a new neat brick 
house, thirty-four feet square, with galleries. Green 
Hill, his old North Carolina friend, was living not 
far from Nashville, and he visited him and went on 
to the camp ground at Fountain Head, where the 
Conference was held; and then over rocks, hills, 
roots, and stumps he made his way to East Tennes- 
see, across the Cumberland mountains; and then 
through North Carolina into South Carolina; and 
exposed to the intense cold of December, he reached 



Francis As bury. 281 

Charleston, where the Conference was to meet, De- 
cember 19. 

He- made the long circuit without resting a week. 
Mile by mile he kept up with his more vigorous com- 
panions. He had virtually given the bishop's work 
into the hands of his colleague. He ordained and 
preached and advised about appointments, but he 
realized the fact that he w T as no longer able to do the 
work of a bishop. He had now but one work, and it 
was to do as much good as he could. He carried 
Bibles with him to give away. He scattered tracts. 
He visited the sick and dying. He spoke to all about 
their souls, and prayed wherever he stopped, either 
at inn or private house. He had reached a period of 
perfect rest in his religious experience. The revival 
fire was burning w T herever he went, the burdens of 
the superintendency were no longer resting heavily 
upon him, and his health, though "by no means good, 
was as strong as it had been for some years. He was 
greatly beloved, and he was very happy in knowing 
that he was. Of no man could it be said more truly 
than of him that his walk was in heaven and that 
his life was hid with Christ in God. He had now 
neared the end of his labors, and was to have only 
one more year of really efficient work. Henceforth 
the shadows deepened, and the time when no man 
can work drew on rapidly, but as yet he did not real- 
ize the fact that the time for rest was near at hand, 
and worked on as aforetime. 



CHAPTER XL. 

1813. 

Ashury's Last Effective Year — Northward Again — Whitehead's 
Life of Wesley — Things in New England — Western Journal 
— Epistle to MeKendree — Charleston Again. 

IN 1813 the good old bishop was steadily declining. 
He had now been forty-two years in America and 
nearly fifty years in the regular ministry. Expos- 
ure, and perhaps injudicious medication, had done 
much to break him down, but his indomitable will 
kept him on his feet. The first of January, 1813, 
found him in Georgetown, South Carolina. After 
twenty-nine years of labor they had a church and 
a preacher's home in Georgetown, and they had one 
thousand black and one hundred white members — 
most of them women— in the society. He spent a 
few days catching up with his correspondence, and 
then, lame and with high fever, through the rain he 
came to Fayetteville, North Carolina. With a blis- 
tered foot, too feeble to walk to church, he was car- 
ried into it, where he preached sitting, and ordained 
two deacons and one elder. He came back to his 
lodgings with a high fever and applied four blisters, 
and for two days was closely confined to his bed. At 
Wilmington he was carried into the church and 
preached morning and evening, and then with swoll- 
en feet he made his way by his usual route, stemming 
the cold wind, to his friend Ballard's. He was sadly 
lame, and could not wear his leather shoe, but he 
(282) 



Francis Asbury. 283 

pressed on, preaching and working. At Thomas 
Lee's he preached and gained a fever and a clear con- 
science by his labors. On his way he got an insight 
into Whitehead's Life of Wesley. His only com- 
ment on this book, so offensive to the early Meth- 
odists, is: "I have looked into Whitehead's Life of 
Wesley. He is vilified. Oh, shame!" Through south- 
eastern Virginia and eastern Virginia he made his 
way by the usual route into Maryland, preaching as 
he went, though he could not stand. At last he 
reached Baltimore. His old friend Otterbein came 
to see him. Asbury was remarkable for the strength 
and continuance of Ms friendships. He never seems 
to have lost a friend to whom he had given his heart 
without reserve, and this good old German was es- 
pecially dear to him. Conference was in session, and 
Asbury ordained the deacons and McKendree the 
elders. If the good old bishop had any weakness 
which was apparently pronounced, it was his failure 
to recognize in his journal the labors of others be- 
sides himself; and unless one knew it to be a fact, he 
would not learn from the journal that McKendree 
was with him at this or at other Conferences. The 
war was on the land, and there were confusion and 
danger, but he pressed on; his friends would gladly 
have sheltered him and relieved him from toil and 
exposure, but he felt that he must work on, and, fee- 
ble as he was, he says he "preached nearly two hours 
and had gracious access to God." And on the next 
day he says: "I was weary and faint, and returned to 
my sick bed to take medicine." The dear old bishop 
needed some protection from his friends as well as 
from himself, for he says : "After a ride of twenty-five 



284 Francis As bury. 

miles I was requested to preach at a moment's warn- 
ing, and I found an assembly ready. It would seem 
as if the preachers think they are committing a sin if 
they do not appoint preaching for me every day, and 
often twice a day. Lord, support us in our labor, 
and we will not murmur." The New York Confer- 
ence was held, and he went into New England and to 
New Hampshire, where he stopped to dine with the 
"nice Websters, in Greenfield," "My knee," he said, 
"is swelled again." He was not pleased with Win- 
chester, where the Conference met, nor, for all that, 
Avith the state of religion in the country. "Like 
priest, like people, in these parts, both judicial!}' 
blind. This town is not reformed by Methodist Con- 
ference or Methodist preaching." He made his an- 
nual tour through the New England states, preach- 
ing as he went. He was never quite able to get rec- 
onciled to New England ways, and says : "I have diffi- 
culties to encounter, but I must be silent; my mind is 
in God. In New England we sing, we build houses, 
w r e eat, and stand at prayer. Here preachers locate 
and people support them, and have traveling preach- 
ers also. Were I to labor forty-two years more, I 
suppose I should not succeed in getting things right. 
Preachers have been sent away from Newport by an 
apostate. Oh, vain steeple houses, bells (organs by 
and by)! these things are against me and contrary to 
the simplicity of Christ. We have made a stand in 
the New England Conferences against steeples and 
pews, and shall probably give up the houses unless 
the pews are taken out." 

The old bishop's favorite remedy for his many 
physical ills seemed to be tartar emetic. No Thomp- 



Francis As bury. 285 

sonian of later day ever relied more on the tincture 
of lobelia than he did on tartar, and when he was 
very unwell he had recourse to this remedy. He 
said: "My dinner and supper to-day have been tartar 
emetic." 

He was an intense Methodist, there could be no 
question of that; and it could not be said that he had 
a lofty opinion of the piety of other Churches, and 
especially of Congregationalists, or, as he called 
them, Presbyterians; but he despised narrow bigot- 
ry, and says: "I never knew the state of the Metho- 
dist chapel in New Durham until now. It was 
bought of the Presbyterians, carried five miles and 
rebuilt within hearing of the Independents' church. 
There is surely little of the mind of Christ in all this, 
and I will preach no more in it. Should the Meth- 
odists have imitated the low Dutch who treated 
them exactly thus in Albany?" 

The travelers pressed on to New York to the Gene- 
see Conference, which met in Oneida county. The 
dear old man says pathetically: "I have suffered 
much from hunger, heat, and sickness in the last two 
hundred and seventy miles. If we were disposed to 
stop at taverns, which we are not, our funds would not 
allow it always when we need refreshment and food. 
We have not brethren in every place, and the east is 
not hospitable Maryland, or the south." The journey 
southward, through the rough country of southern 
New York and northern Pennsylvania, was one of 
usual difficulty those rude days. At all the houses 
at which he stopped, either to spend the night or to 
dine, he had religious service; and generally his 
services were respectfully received, but not always 



286 Francis As bur y. 

so. He says: a We put into a house at the Great 
Bend, in Pennsylvania, and stopped to dine. Here 1 
lectured, sung, and prayed with the iiifidels of the 
house; some stared, some smiled, and some wept. 
The lady asked me to call again as I passed. k Yes, 
madam; on condition you will do two things: read 
your Bible, and betake yourself to prayer.' " On his 
way he stopped at Daniel Montgomery's. His wife, 
he said, was his old friend Mollie Wallis; "but oh, 
how changed in forty-two years! Time has been 
eighty years at work on her wrinkled face." At Ja- 
cob Gerhart's the company went to bed and "I," he 
says, "sat up hulling peas, and I am to preach at six 
o'clock." On the next day, as they traveled, "we 
asked for food, and were told a tavern was near. 
Our money was scarce. We had borrowed five dol- 
lars, which will barely be enough, perhaps, to bring 
us through this inhospitable district." 

It was during this tour that he wrote that long, 
rambling epistle to McKendree, which is published 
in full in Paine's Life of McKendree, giving his 
views of the episcopacy. Feeble as he was, he went 
to camp meetings, and pressed on his way to the Ohio 
Conference, which met at Chillicothe on September 
1; and then to Kentucky to the Tennessee Confer- 
ence, which met at Keese Chapel. He realized that 
his sun was setting, and as he stopped to rest he 
wrote his valedictory address to. the presiding elders. 
He says little in his journal of the toils of this weary 
journey. He came through North Carolina and 
South Carolina into Georgia. He rode through 
Georgia as far as Savannah, and into South Carolina 
again; spent a little while in Charleston, and closed 



Francis As bury. 287 

the last year of unbroken toil at Renibert's. This 
was Asbury's last year of continuous toil. The next 
two years of his life were broken into by repeated 
attacks which confined him to his bed. He realized 
that the end was not far off, and very grandly he 
prepared for his departure. He surrendered to his 
colleague the entire charge of the work, wrote his 
farewell to the presiding elders, made his will, and 
then went on doing all he could. The work he had 
done during the year had been at great cost of suffer- 
ing, and all could see, save the man himself, that he 
ought to have sought some quiet home and waited 
for his change; but the feebler he grew the harder he 
worked. 



CHAPTER XLL 

1814-1815, 

The Sun Going Down — Goes Northward — Long Attack of Sick- 
ness in Pennsylvania— John Wesley Bond — McKendrce 
Crippled — Reaches Nashville — Georgia for the Last Time- 
Goes Northward — The West Again— Surrenders All Control 
to McKendree. 

ASBURY spent ten days in Charleston and re- 
cruited his strength somewhat, and if he could 
have been persuaded to remain longer in its bracing 
and balmy air his life might have been prolonged; 
but he had suffered so much and was so accustomed 
to the invalid life he had led that while he could 
ride he felt that he could not rest. Time was so 
short, he said, he must go. On January 1, 1814, he 
preached at Rembert's, and in company with some 
of his South Carolina brethren he began his journey. 
He visited and prayed with his old friends along the 
route, and reached Fayetteville in five days. 

Pie now had but one topic in every sermon. "He 
was divinely impressed," he said, "to preach sancti- 
fi cation in every sermon." The South Carolina Con- 
ference met in Fayetteville, and was a heavenly, 
spiritual, and united Conference. After its adjourn- 
ment he remained a week, and then, enjoying great 
peace of mind, he came away. On this journey he 
met William Glendening. The old Scotchman had 
once been his warm friend, and afterwards his stern 
opponent; but as was the case with O'Kelly, so now 
with Glendening, the old veterans met and embraced 
(288) 



Francis Asbury. 289 

each other, and parted in peace. Preaching and vis- 
iting his brethren, he made his way to Norfolk, where 
the Virginia Conference was to meet; but the expos- 
ure had been too great for him, and when he reached 
Norfolk he had a severe attack of pleurisy, which 
confined him for two weeks; but he got out of his 
sick bed, and through excessive cold made his way 
to Baltimore. During the whole session he was sick, 
but he preached the funeral sermon of his dear friend 
Otterbein. He says of him: "Forty years have I 
known the retiring modesty of this man of God, tow- 
ering, majestic, above his fellows in learning, wis- 
dom, and grace, and yet seeking to be known only of 
God and the people of God. He had been sixty years 
a minister, fifty years a converted one." The friend- 
ship between Otterbein and Asbury was very beauti- 
ful. The quiet, self-poised, cultivated German was 
worthy of the love the sturdy, self-taught English- 
man felt for him. 

Feeble as Asbury was, he still pressed on, but it 
was evident to all that he could not long continue 
this course. He left Baltimore on his northern tour, 
and his journal says: "On the 25th of April I 
preached at Bethel. We had a rainy day, and my 
flesh failed. I rested at Bales's, greatly spent with 
labor. We should have failed in our march through 
Jersey, but we have great kindness and attentions, 
and have great accommodations." The next entry 
is in July: "I return to my journal after an interval 
of twelve weeks. T have been ill indeed." The at- 
tention the dear old bishop received was all that 
could be rendered, but as soon as he could be lifted 
into his little covered wagon he began his journey. 
19 



290 Francis Asbury. 

The kind people of Philadelphia sent him a neat car- 
riage, and the Baltimore Conference detailed John 
Wesley Bond to attend him on his journey. This 
young man, who was so dear to Asbury, was the 
brother of the distinguished Thomas E. Bond, who 
was the famous editor of the Christian Advocate and 
Journal, and the uncle of the not less distinguished 
Thomas E. Bond, Jr., editor of the Baltimore Chris- 
tian Advocate. John Wesley Bond was a very pious, 
very earnest young man, and devoted to Asbury. He 
did much for the relief of the poor invalid, and per- 
haps shortened his own life by his devotion to him. 
Despite his feebleness, Asbury started with his com- 
panion westward. He was very happy in his reli- 
gious life. He says: "I groan one minute with pain 
and shout glory the next." In their comfortable 
two-horse carriage they made their way over horri- 
ble roads toward Ohio, and then through the state to 
Cincinnati. He was riding over bad roads, sick and 
weary, trying to preach and exhort at every stopping 
place. To add to his distress, McKendree had been 
thrown from his horse and badly crippled, and was 
unable to get to Cincinnati to the Conference. As 
neither bishop could preside, John Sale did so. The 
old bishop made out a plan of appointments and then 
hurried away through Kentucky to the seat of the 
Tennessee Conference, which included a considera- 
ble part of Kentucky. 

Sick as he was, he had intended to make an effort 
to reach the Natchez country; but Bishop McKen- 
dree was so lame that Bishop Asbury said it was 
doubtful as to whether he could reach the South Car- 
olina Conference in time, and for that reason alone 



Fraxcis Asbuby. 291 

he gave up the attempt. With his colleague he 
braved the oft-crossed Cumberland and Alleghany 
mountains again, passed through South Carolina, 
and went into Georgia, and reached Milledgeviile. 
He was so feeble that he could not be heard, but he 
attempted to preach at the ordination, and after the 
adjournment of Conference he and his assistants 
moved toward Charleston. In Augusta, in the house 
of Asaph Waterman, he preached his last sermon in 
Georgia, and left the state the next day to return 
to it no more. He did not go, as was his custom, to 
Charleston, but made his way through South Caro- 
lina and North Carolina and by his oft-traveled route 
to Maryland. There is nothing in the account he 
gives save the same story of travel and suffering 
until the reader feels the pain, and longs for some 
one to lay his hand on him and stay him in his prog- 
ress. 

He was dying with senile consumption, but he 
would not pause. Through the eastern shore, 
through Delaware, through Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey, the weary man moved to New York. "Poor, 
wheezing, groaning, coughing Francis," as he called 
himself, came into the New York Conference and 
spent a few hours. Although he could not preach or 
talk long, he could plan ; and he did that, and went on 
toward New England, to go on to the seat of the 
New England Conference. He was unable to pre- 
side, but George Pickering did that for him, and he 
did the ordaining and the planning. Although it 
was the 10th of June, they had rain and snow. Mc- 
Kendree had gone to western New York to meet the 
Genesee Conference, and they were to meet again at 



292 Francis As bury. 

the Ohio Conference in September. It was with the 
usual difficulty that he made this journey, but he 
reached Lebanon in good time. On the way he dis- 
tributed hundreds of Testaments, visited many of 
his old friends, and preached at the camp meetings. 
Of course he was too feeble to be heard, but the peo- 
ple were anxious to get only a sight of the aged and 
venerated apostle. He and Bishop McKendree had 
now an earnest talk. "I told Bishop McKendree the 
western part of the empire would be the glory of 
America for the poor and pious; that it ought to 
have five Conferences, and as far as I could I traced 
out the lines and boundaries. I told my colleague 
that having passed the first allotted period — seventy 
years — and being, as he knew, out of health, it could 
not be expected that I could visit the extremities, 
every year, sitting in eight, and it might be twelve, 
Conferences, and traveling six thousand miles in 
eight months. If I was able to keep up with the 
Conferences I could not be expected to preside at 
more than every other one. As to the stations, I 
should never exhibit a plan unfinished, but still get 
all the information in my power. The plan I might 
be laboring on would always be submitted to such 
eyes as ought to see it, and the measure I meted to 
others I should expect to receive/' This was a char- 
acteristic utterance, and there is a pathos in the 
statement that he would not expect to preside over 
more than half of the Conferences, and his appoint- 
ments should be made by himself. He attempted to 
preach the memorial sermon for Dr. Coke, and then 
went into Tennessee to meet the Tennessee Confer- 
ence in Wilson county. Although he had spoken so 



Francis As bury. 293 

decidedly to Bishop McKendree at the Ohio Confer- 
ence, when he reached the Tennessee Conference he 
said: "My eyes fail; I will resign the stations to 
Bishop McKendree; I will take away my feet. It is 
my fifty-fifth year of ministry and forty-fifth of labor 
in America. My mind enjoys great peace and divine 
consolation; my health is better, but whether health, 
life, or death, good is the will of the Lord. I will 
trust him and will praise him. He is the strength of 
my heart and my portion forever. Glory! glory! 
glory!" 

And thus he surrendered his commission. He had 
been in sole command of the army for all these years, 
and had allowed none to interfere with his mandate; 
but now he lays it down, and henceforth leaves to an- 
other to do the duty so long resting upon him. He 
turned his face eastward, and by the 5th of Decem- 
ber he stopped at the home of Wesley Harrison, the 
son of Thomas Harrison, who had been the first to 
receive him in his visit to Harrisonburg, Virginia; 
and from his house he turned his face southward on 
his way to Charleston. By December 20th, finding 
that he would not be able to make the journey, he 
turned back at Granby, South Carolina, and the last 
entry in his journal was made, according to the print- 
ed page, on the 7th of December. The journal says 
he was in Virginia "November 1. This was an error. 
He was in Middle Tennessee the first of November, 
and could not possibly have reached Virginia in five 
days. The editor has evidently been misled by the 
names of Wesley and Thomas Harrison, and the fact 
stated that their father received him at Harrison- 
burg, Virginia. He evidently took the nearest route 



294 Francis As bury. 

to South Carolina, and passed again over the mount- 
ains into Buncombe county and then into the upper 
part of South Carolina. The entry was- no doubt 
made by the editor, who, careful as he was, made a 
number of small mistakes. Asbury says he came to 
Wesley Harrison's, then to Thomas Harrison's. He 
was in Sumner county, Tennessee, when he started 
to Charleston. He says: "We came upon the turn- 
pike — a disgrace to the state." He came to father 
Holt's, and in a few days was at Wesley Harrison's, 
then by Robert Harrison's, Boling's, Barnett's, 
Mills's, Glover's, Arrington's, Means's. These names 
indicate the route he pursued, which was through 
East Tennessee, western North Carolina, and upper 
South Carolina to Columbia. He had taken a month 
for the tour, and now turned his course from Colum- 
bia toward Charleston; but at Granby he found it 
would be useless to attempt to make the journey, and 
he turned his face northward. The last entry he 
ever made in his journal was made here, and is 
Thursday, 7th of December: "We met a storm and 
stopped at William Baker's, Granby." He was dy- 
ing with consumption, and the disease was aggra- 
vated by a severe influenza. He knew it would be 
useless to go farther, and he turned his way toward 
Maryland. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

1816. 

Asbury's Last Journey — The Sun Goes Down — Granby, South 
Carolina — Journey to Richmond — Last Sermon — Reaches Mr. 
Arnold's — Death Scene. 

GRANBY was a small village in the central part 
of South Carolina, and when the invalid bishop 
realized the fact that he could not reach Charleston 
for the Conference he decided to return to Maryland, 
so as to be at the session of the General Conference 
in May. We have no record of this journey, the last 
he made. It is likely that he went by Camden and 
Fayetteville and Wilmington, and along the eastern 
shore of North Carolina and Virginia to Norfolk, and 
then turned toward Richmond. Along this route he 
had many friends and many homes, and the journey 
could be made in easy stages. He preached, or at- 
tempted to preach, to the last. He was wasted to a 
skeleton, and could not do more than speak while sit- 
ting, in tones too low for any but a very few to hear, 
but he would not allow himself any repose. It was 
nearly three months after he left Granby before 
he reached Richmond, Virginia. He wished, he said, 
once more to preach here, and he was borne in the 
arms of his brethren to the church and seated upon 
a table, and with feeble voice, after pausing to re- 
cover his breath, he preached for nearly an hour with 
much feeling from Romans ix. 28: "For he will finish 
the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because 

(295) 



296 F BANC is As BURY. 

a short work will the Lord make upon the earth/' 
The audience were much affected. It was to them as 
a voice from another world. He felt that he was 
speaking to them for the last time, and he spoke with 
the earnestness and tenderness of a dying man. 
When the rambling, tender talk was finished they 
bore the attenuated form of the dying man to the car- 
riage, and he left the pulpit which he had entered at 
sixteen years old to return to it no more. He had 
probably preached more sermons at the time he 
ceased his work than any other man then in the 
world. Mr. Wesley, who went to crowded cities and 
populous villages by easy riding, may have preached 
oftener when he lived, but it is, I think, a fact 
that Asbury, up to the time he died, had preached 
more sermons than any other man then living in 
the world. From Maine to Tennessee, from Ohio to 
the borders of Florida, his voice had been heard. 
His zeal never knew any abatement, and he never 
stayed on his way, unless he was too ill to ride. But 
now his work was done. In October, 1771, he 
preached his first sermon in America in Philadel- 
phia ; in March, 1816, forty-five years afterwards, he 
preached for the last time in Kichmond, Virginia. 

He rested on Monday, and started on his journey 
on Tuesday. He went by slow stages until Friday, 
when he reached the home of his old friend George 
Arnold, in Spottsylvania, Virginia, twenty miles from 
Fredericksburg, which he was trying to reach by 
the Sabbath. Finding.it impossible to go forward, 
he did not make the attempt. He grew worse, and 
his friends wished to send for a physician, but he 
would not consent, saying that before he could reach 



Francis Asbubt. 297 

him lie would be gone. He was asked if, in view of 
death, he had anything to communicate. He said he 
had fully expressed his mind in relation to the 
Church in his address to the bishop and to the Gen- 
eral Conference. He had nothing more to add. 

Sunday morning came, and he asked if it was not 
time for service, and, recollecting himself, he re- 
quested the family to be called together. This was 
done, and his young companion, at his request, chose 
the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, which he read 
and expounded. During these exercises he appeared 
calm and much engaged in devotion. He grew fee- 
bler, and his speech began to fail. Seeing the dis- 
tress of his son John, as he called young Bond, he 
raised his hand and looked upon him with a smile of 
joy, and then, raising both hands, he bent his head 
on the hand of his dear son and breathed his life out. 
He was in his seventy-first year. His death took 
place on the 21st day of March, 1816. He was buried 
by those who were with him in the family burying 
ground of Mr. Arnold, but at the session of the Gen- 
eral Conference the remains were brought to Balti- 
more and deposited in a vault under the pulpit of the 
Eutaw-street Church. 

The insignificant town he had entered forty years 
before, and in which he had begun a meeting that 
seemed to promise so little, was now a large and 
wealthy city. He was known to all its people and 
honored by them all. A vast concourse of citizens 
and several clergymen of other denominations fol- 
lowed the corpse from Light street to the burial 
place on Eutaw, and the General Conference, with 
McKendree and the English representative, Black, 



298 Francis As bury. 

at its head, walked in sad procession to the church, 
and he was laid to rest. The Methodists of the city 
afterwards purchased a handsome body of land near 
the city and opened Mount Olivet cemetery, to which 
his remains were removed, and in which they now 
lie; and not far from these remains lie those of his 
old associate and companion Jesse Lee, who died the 
latter part of the same year in which A sbury died. 

With the death of Asbury passed away the man 
who had exerted a mightier influence over America 
than any other who had ever lived in it. He had 
entered upon the work of the ministry in America 
when the Methodists were but a mere handful. He 
had become the most influential man among the 
Methodist preachers before he was appointed to 
the superintendency, and that influence continued 
unlimited for forty years after he was elected a 
bishop. His voice was the most potent in the land. 
Neither Ignatius Loyola nor John Wesley had a 
greater power over those associated with them than 
this saddler apprentice of Birmingham, and neither 
of them had so mighty a personal influence upon 
so many people. His place in the history of Amer- 
ican civilization has not been accorded, and even 
many of those who have entered into the fruit 
of his labor have not properly rated this man who 
planned so well and did so much. He was not like 
Luther, or Wesley, or Calvin, a man of many sides. 
He was remarkable in that he had but one aim and 
but one way to advance it. His aim was simply to 
save men from sin, and his way to advance that was 
by the simple preaching of the gospel. He had full 
faith in the gospel, and he believed if it was preached 



Francis As bury. 299 

anu accepted that all other things would follow in its 
wake. He had no faith in government or education 
or in anything human apart from the gospel, and he 
believed that he had but one work to do, and that 
was to preach it; and from the time he left his place 
on the saddler's bench for his circuit till the end, this 
was his work. 

The story written in these pages has been a story 
of most heroic encounter with difficulties and of un- 
ceasing toil. The opening of the western country, 
the subjugation of the Indian tribes, the impetus 
given to emigration from the older to the new 7 er 
states, demanded action quick and sharp. The over- 
throw of the state churches in the south, the wonder- 
ful interest which had been aroused in religious mat- 
ters all over the land, had called for some great lead- 
er who knew what to do and how to do it. Asbury 
was eminently adapted to that place, and filled it as 
perhaps no other man could have done. He began 
his work when there was not a turnpike nor a stage 
line in America, and when the paths to the wilder- 
ness were Indian trails. He had gone into the wil- 
derness while the war whoop of the savage was still 
in the ears of those to whom he preached. The hard- 
ships he was compelled to endure were never inter- 
mitted, and to add to it all he was an invalid a large 
part of the time. He saw, however, the labor of his 
hands as no other man perhaps has ever seen it. The 
year he began his work there were less than five hun- 
dred Methodists in America; when he died there 
were two hundred and fourteen thousand. The 
Church had been organized and was in working or- 
der in every part of the field. He had breathed his 



300 Francis Asbury. 

spirit into hundreds of itinerant and local preachers, 
and when he ceased at once to work and live the 
Church to which he gave his life was established 
over all the United States. 

Kealizing a few years before his death that he was 
near his end, he made his will. He had never made 
or tried to make a dollar. His small income, the 
same as that allowed every traveling preacher, suf- 
ficed for his moderate wants, and from that he w T as 
able to assist his aged parents. After they died he 
gave what he could save to the widows of itinerant 
preachers and to the needy preachers he met on his 
tours. Some friends made him sundry bequests, 
and he had two thousand dollars of his own in his 
old age. He bequeathed that to the widows of his 
old associates, providing that every child who bore 
his name should have a Bible furnished to him by 
his executors. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

Asbury's Religious Experience. 

NO honest biography of Asbury can be written 
which does not give prominence to his account 
of his personal religious experience. In no private 
diary is there a fuller exhibit given of all the phases 
of one's inner life than Asbury gives in the pages of 
his honest and homely journal. He was a good 
child — prayerful, obedient, and truthful. When 
quite a child he was awakened to the need of conver- 
sion, and at twelve years of age was converted. He 
knew it and rejoiced in it, and, tliough through a 
child's ignorance he afterwards lost the evidence, he 
never lost the character of a Christian, and when he 
was sixteen he began to preach. His religious life 
was serious, self-denying, and emotional. All Meth- 
odists in that day, after a conscious conversion, be- 
gan to seek for what they called the removal of the 
least and last remains of the carnal mind, and As- 
bury began to seek for it with all his heart, and in the 
ardor of boyhood and in his early and happy experi- 
ence he thought he had attained it, but he afterwards 
decided that he was mistaken. He had almost an 
uninterrupted witness of acceptance with God, and 
had a constant dominion over sin and the witness of 
his own spirit that he was pure in his intentions; but 
he was confident that that lofty experience Mr. Wes- 
ley pictured as Christian perfection he had not 
reached when he came to America, nor for many 
vears afterwards. 



302 Francis Asbury. 

During his first years in America, while he records 
a story of great comforts, he wrote bitter things 
against himself oftentimes, and censures himself for 
sundry failings. Thus in 1772: "Found an inatten- 
tion to study, an unsettled frame of mind, and much 
backwardness in prayer. Lord, help me with active 
warmth to move." "Visited an old man who was 
sick, but came away without prayer, and was justly 
blamed, both by my friends and myself. Lord, for- 
give my secret and open faults." "My heart is still 
distressed for want of more religion. I long to be 
whally given up, and to seek no favor but what Com- 
eth from God alone." "A cloud rested on my mind, 
which was occasioned by talking and jesting. I also 
feel at times tempted to impatience and pride of 
heart." "In this journey I have my soul comforta- 
ble and alive to God." "On Saturday all my soul 
was love. No desire for anything, but God had 
place in my heart. Keep me, O Lord, in this de- 
lightful, blessed frame!" On Tuesday he says: "My 
foolish heart felt rather disposed to murmuring, 
pride, and discontent. Lord, pardon me, and grant 
me grace." The next day he says: "My conscience 
reproves me for the appearance of levity." 

These are but specimen extracts from his early 
journal. Sometimes he is very happy after being 
very much depressed, condemning himself for what 
appears to us to have been neither errors nor sins; 
but, despite his changing moods, he was always 
faithful. He had one desire: to live entirely for 
God. Resigned, submissive, untiring, he pressed on 
the way. 

On June 14, 1774, he says : "My heart seems wholly 



Francis Asbury. 303 

devoted to God, and he favors me with power over 
all outward and inward sin. Some people, if they 
felt as I feel at present, would, perhaps, conclude 
they were saved from all indwelling sin." The next 
day he says: "My soul was under heavy exercises 
and much troubled by manifold temptations. I feel 
it hurtful to lay too much on myself. Lord, make 
thy face to shine upon me, and make me always joy- 
ful in thy salvation." 

These extracts from his journal are merely sam- 
ples of numerous entries, and they tell the same 
story; a constant reaching forward after the high- 
est attainments and varying sensations — sometimes 
very happy, sometimes very much depressed. 

On Sunday, August 6, 1786, he says: "A pleasing- 
thought passed through my mind. It was this: that 
I was saved from the remains of sin. As yet, I have 
felt no returns thereof." But on October 5, of the 
same year, he says: "My soul is under deej) exercise 
on account of the deadness of the people and my own 
want of fervor and holiness of heart." 

The effort to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion 
about the extent of the good work wrought in his 
soul had been so unsatisfactory that for some years 
he seems to have almost given over any effort to 
make an exact record of it. His affections never 
varied; his devotion to duty knew no intermission; 
his prayerfulness and his attention to his religious 
duties never slackened: btit his introspection was 
to a large degree interfered with by the demands 
of his work upon him. His sky grew brighter as the 
years passed on, and during the days of his long in- 
valid life there was a constant serenity. He had re- 



304 Francis Asbuby. 

ceived, as all the Methodists had, the teachings of 
Mr. Wesley on the possibility of Christian perfection 
secured instantly by faith, and was patiently wait- 
ing, as he was earnestly groaning, for the hour when 
the consciousness would be given him that his soul 
was filled with pure love. 

In 1803 he said: "My general experience is: close 
communion with God, holy fellowship with the Fa- 
ther and his Son Jesus Christ, a will resigned, fre- 
quent addresses to the throne of grace." And Jan- 
uary 9 he says: "I feel it my duty to speak chiefly 
upon perfection, and, above all, to strive to attain 
unto that which I preach." March 7 : " I find the way 
of holiness very narrow to walk in or to preach." In 
April, 1803, he says: "My mind is in a great calm 
after the tumult of the Baltimore Conference — in ad- 
dition to the charge of the superintendency to feel 
and to live perfect love." 

This was thirty-two years after he came to Amer- 
ica, when he was fifty-eight years old; and, as far as 
I can find it, this is the first positive statement that 
what he sought for he had found. As in the case of 
Mr. Wesley and Mr. Fletcher, there is nowhere a 
marked line when he, by a wonderful transition, 
passed into the land of perfect peace. It was, as far 
as his journal tells the story, a constant progress, 
leading him at last into the land of Beulah. 

The study of a life like his, where all the throb- 
bin gs of an earnest heart are seen, cannot but be a 
profitable exercise. When we note the experiences 
through which he passed, and when his life in its 
external features is looked at, we find that an ex- 
ample of advanced holiness is presented which has 



Francis Asbubt. 305 

rarely been equaled in this world. Perhaps he 
erred, I may say confidently he did err, in following 
his ideas of self-denial to the extent he did. Not 
Loyola, with his scourge, had less pity on his poor, 
feeble frame than Asbury on himself. He pitied 
every being but himself. The poorest slave, who 
was so much the object of his pity, was better treat- 
ed by the cruelest master than Asbury treated his 
poor, frail, emaciated body. Fasting when he was 
barely able to walk, facing bleak winter when God's 
laws called him to shelter, riding in hot suns when he 
needed shade, rising from a bed when exhausted na- 
ture bade him stay, he suffered when God would 
have spared him. His austerity toward himself 
made him not sour, but did make him exacting to- 
ward others, and he had less love for the things God 
had made lovely than was his privilege and, perhaps, 
his duty. ■ God honored him greatly, and for years 
he walked in the secret place of the Almighty. His 
life was hid with Christ in God. 

Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, were 
good men all ; but in the holiness of his life and in the 
extent of his usefulness, Francis Asbury was behind 
none of them. 
20 



CHAPTEBXLIV. 

The Character of Francis A.sbury. 

IN my opinion Francis Asbury has been the worst 
misread man in the history of the iirst men of 
American Methodism, When fair and well-informed 
historians give an estimate of him so different from 
that 1 entertain, 1 may hesitate in giving utterance 
to my conclusions; but a long and very careful study 
of a very transparent life has, 1 think, qualified me 
for making a verdict. 

By the older class of Methodists he was looked 
upon almost with awe. He was the ideal Christian, 
Mr. Wesley had no more the confidence of the Eng- 
lish Wosleyans, Calvin's followers were not blinder 
in their attachment to the great reformer, than the 
preachers brought into the work in America were to 
Asbury. Many of the latter-day Methodists do not 
place him on thishigh pedestal. They know little of 
him, and judging him from the allusions to him in 
history they have failed by a great deal to recognize 
Ids true worth. 

I do not think, rating men as they are rated by men, 
that Asbury was intellectually a great man. Many 
of the leaders of the Methodist movement were be- 
yond him in extraordinary endowments, but in prac- 
tical common sense he was behind none of them, 
Mr. Wesley's wondrous power to rule men, and his 
correct idea of what was to be done, was not beyond 
(300) 



Francis Asbury. 307 

that of Asbury. In directing the work of the Church 
as a pastor he made few mistakes, and when he was 
invested with the bishopric his judgment was nearly 
always to be relied on. Sometimes he overrated a 
man, sometimes he undervalued him, but generally 
his estimate was a coned one. He saw the field, he 
realized the need of the limes, and he had a1 once a 
man to supply the need. He was a general com- 
manding, and his campaign was always well planned 
and wide-sweeping. 

He was a diligent student. He knew enough of 
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to read the Bible in (hem. 
He was well read in (he theology of the Wosleyans, 
was acquainted with the best of the old Puritan di- 
vines, and he read much history, both profane and 
sacred, and was very fond of religious biography. 
With polite literature he had no acquaintance at all, 
and perhaps he regarded its study as something 
rather to be avoided than to be pursued. He was a 
ver}' decided and unswerving man. The sturdiness 
of his race found its best example in him. He was 
absolutely fearless, and was as immovable as granite 
when principle was involved. There have been a 
few points at which I was compelled to admit that 
the adhering to what he believed to be right led him 
to do some violence to what T thought were the rights 
of others, but he never did anything he could not de- 
fend, nor ever asked one to do anything when he did 
not believe he ought to do it. 

I would not be perfectly fair if I did not admit that 
in some respects Mr. Asbury seems to have been a 
narrow man. His ideas of ministerial support, of 
the obligations of a people to their pastor, and of a 



308 Francis Asbuby. 

pastor to his family, were exceedingly contracted. 
He unwillingly encouraged good men to be shame- 
fully penurious in their gifts to good causes, and laid 
such stress upon plainness that he encouraged covet- 
ousness. The gold on a schoolgirl's person seemed 
more offensive to him than the gold hid in her fa- 
ther's coffers, if that father was a plain man of 
steady ways. He could not recognize the fact that 
the Methodists were growing rich. They were poor 
when he first knew them, and he wanted them to stay 
so. He cared comparatively little for advanced ed- 
ucation among ministers. He wanted piety, zeal, 
and heroism in his preachers, and then he was con- 
tent if they knew how to use the English tongue. He 
was more concerned about the circuit in the wilder- 
ness than the cathedral in the city. He was not al- 
ways tolerant. What he said as true he thought was 
true, and he had no disposition to reopen the ques- 
tion. When men differed with him they were wrong, 
and that was the end of it. 

His idea of the piety of other preachers but the 
Methodists was not high. Especially did he dispar- 
age the New Englanders. That he was prepared to 
do them justice one will not be likely to admit who 
takes into consideration his very rapid transit 
through the states, and the little intercourse he had 
with Calvinists. 

The story of his life is the story of heroic self-sac- 
rifice, and the magnificent campaigns which he 
planned and which he so successfully carried out are 
without a parallel in the history of the world. 

He was imperious, a very autocrat in the domain 
in which he had been made dictator, but he was a die- 



Francis As bub y. 309 

tator for the good of others alone. He required in- 
stant obedience to his commands, even when he or- 
dered difficult and sometimes apparently impossible 
things to be done, but he was as willing to share the 
danger as he was to ask another to face it. 

That he was sometimes petulant, and sometimes 
said things which were unduly severe, was doubtless 
true. He did not admire Rankin, nor Jesse Lee, nor 
O'Kelly, nor Glendening, nor sundry others who op- 
posed him; they thought he was overbearing, and he 
thought they were untrustworthy, and to his inti- 
mate friends he spoke his mind freely of these men, 
and in no mild terms. We of this day clearly see 
that he misread some of them. Once he turned his 
back on Jesse Lee, when he was speaking, and Lee 
said "one of his brethren had said no man of com- 
mon sense would speak as he did, and he supposed he 
was a man of uncommon sense." "Yes," said As- 
bury, "yes, yes, brother Lee, you are a man of un- 
common sense." "Then," said Lee, "I beg that un- 
common attention be paid to what I am about to 
say." 

Once Asbury said petulantly that he would not 
give one single preacher for three married ones. "I 
ask a location, sir," said one; "And so do I," said an- 
other; "And so do I," said another of the married 
men. "Why, brethren, what do you mean?" said 
th,e alarmed bishop. "Why, sir, you said you had . 
rather have one single preacher than three of us." 
"Did I say that?" "Yes, sir, you did." "Then I'll 
take it back; I'll take it back." 

He did not like opposition, nor any movement that 
lessened his episcopal power, and when the men of 



310 Francis Asbury. 

the presbyterial party, as he called it, persisted in 
their effort to make the presiding eldership electoral, 
he avowed his determination to use his position to 
prevent it, as far as possible, saying to T. L. Douglas 
in a letter quoted by Bennett (Memorials, p. 584) : "In 
former times I have been impartial, indifferent, and 
have appointed good men, that I knew were for a 
presbyterial party; but since they have made such 
an unwarrantable attack upon the constitution, in 
the very first General Conference after its adoption, 
I will only trust such men as far as I can see them, 
and let such men know that I know their principles 
and disapprove them." 

He was sternly opposed to innovations, and as he 
grew older was always on the alert lest there should 
be any made. Young Nathan Bangs had been sent 
to New York as one of the preachers. He found a 
state of things which he thought ought to be correct- 
ed. There was a wild excitement in the meetings, 
which was very offensive to the young preacher, and 
at considerable cost to himself he sternly suppressed 
these excesses. It was reported to Asbury that he 
was making a concession to the demands of the fas- 
tidious, and the old bishop mildly alluded to it in a 
letter to the young pastor. Bangs asked for an ex- 
planation, but showed that he was hurt. The dear 
old man replied, saying among other things: "I am 
sorry I am not more prudent, but when I am called 
upon so often to speak and write I am not sufficiently 
on my guard. I hope you will bear with me. You 
will pardon me, and pray that I may sav, do, preach, 
and write better.'' 

He had no children of his own, and he looked on 



Francis Asbury. 311 

the young preachers as his family. He wai as gen- 
tle and tender toward them as a grandfather could 
have been toward the members of a son's household. 
Ee was in the habit of tenderly embracing them, and 
kissed them affectionately on the cheek. He called 
them by the most endearing names — but he allowed 
none to oppose him. He was sure he was right, and 
if any opposed him they were to be resisted and 
sternly stood against. He made no compromises, no 
concessions, and was not always just in his censures. 

While these features of his character must be rec 
ognized, one has not to search far before he finds that 
there was no malevolence in the good man's heart. 
He had never come in contact with a strong man 
without a contest, but it was the brave tilt of a stain- 
less knight, and always in defense of what he be- 
lieved to be the right. He was as devoid of selfish- 
ness as he was of fear, and as ready to forgive as lie 
was quick to strike; and while his course was un- 
swerving in the prosecution of duty, personal rancor 
had no place in his heart. Rankin,Wesley, Coke, Lee, 
O'Kelly, had all found him a sturdy antagonist, but 
he always contended for a principle. He called no 
man rabbi, and he asked from others nothing more 
than he gave. 

No man ever did so much for Methodism inAmeri- 
ca as Francis Asbury, and no man ever had an eye 
more single to God's glory in the work he did, and 
no man ever labored more unselfishly for those 
among whom his lot was cast. 

THE END. 



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